New story: A look inside the unlikely path that led JJ Redick to detour from media stardom to the Lakers sidelines. “We were not trying to go out and hire a coach to coach LeBron's final chapter,” Rob Pelinka told ESPN. https://t.co/czg6BZrQ9C
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) September 30, 2024
Why did you take this job?
“Um,” Redick, after pausing a beat, responds. “That’s probably the best question.”
Three years into retiring from a 15-season playing career, Redick detoured from burgeoning media stardom to shoot his shot with the Lakers. He has yet to coach a professional basketball game in any capacity. Not as a head coach. Not as an assistant. Not even roaming the sidelines for a summer league game.
But the self-described “basketball sicko,” despite the challenges ahead for a franchise seemingly in flux as it attempts to navigate the end of LeBron James’ career, the beginning of Bronny’s and keeping Laker Nation satisfied by competing in the present without forsaking the future, feels as if he is built for this.
“[With] my understanding of the modern game, my relationships with players, it felt like the right time for me personally to go into coaching,” Redick said.
“And then obviously I wanted to coach the Lakers.”
…
REDICK WAS EATING lunch with his dad when he fielded perhaps the most important phone call of his life. Plucked from the television and podcast studios with no previous coaching experience, he was offered a chance to call the shots for one of the most glamourous franchises in the world — and had someone he needed to talk to before he could accept.
“‘Dad, I got to go make one call,'” Redick said, recalling how he pushed his chair back from his table at the stately Washington Duke Inn on Duke’s golf course on June 20.
“So, that’s when I first called LeBron. First time we had talked about me coaching. And I came back. I sat back down. I said, ‘All right, I’m in.'”
Redick’s prioritization was telling. Pelinka and team governor Jeanie Buss offered him the gig and will ostensibly be his bosses. But Redick’s success, or lack thereof, will largely depend on getting the most out of a guy who is just six months his junior suiting up for his 22nd season.
After forging a connection with James over their shared love of the sport, Redick being “in” as the next coach of the Lakers will test if that sense of purity can remain.
And if it wasn’t challenging enough already to be the coach responsible for managing James at this stage of his career, he has to do it while also combating a perception he was hand-picked by James for the part. “It’s a juicy-ass story, but it’s not true,” Gallagher said.
What is true is there will be far more scrutiny on Redick for how he handles coaching LeBron’s 19-year-old son Bronny than there was coaching his sons, 10-year-old Knox and 8-year-old Kai.
Rather than perceive coaching LeBron and Bronny as a no-win situation, Redick has compartmentalized. Coaching LeBron, he says, is a chance to strategize with another savant of the sport. Coaching Bronny is a chance to pour into a young player determined to make it, something he can relate to as the guy collecting DNPs in his early days in Orlando. And Redick simultaneously possesses the audacity to think he can build a career with the purple and gold while knowing that none of the past six coaches since Jackson have lasted more than three seasons.
“There’s no assurances in this industry,” Redick said. “I recognize that at any point in time, I could be let go. That’s a reality.”
And James, whose final seasons will coincide with Redick’s first as a coach and Bronny’s first as a player, wants to make it work to set up his son, his co-host turned coach and the Lakers franchise beyond his playing days.
“I wanted the Lakers, as a player and as a fan of the franchise, to be able to hire the coach that should be there,” James said. “Not only as I’m finishing my career, but long after I’m gone because there’s been so many guys in that seat over the last few years. And to be able to find someone that could be stable in that position is very key for any franchise.
“And for me to be a part of a legacy franchise, I feel like that was important.”
And Redick is just enough of a basketball sicko to think he is the guy meant to pull it off.
“It’s kind of nuts,” Krzyzewski said. “But good nuts.”
Fab article by Dave McMen. Rob Pelinka be damned, it’s easy to be optimistic about this season. If we can stay healthy and make a couple of good moves at the deadline, this team could be fun. I think we will finish in top 6 and have a puncher’s shot at #18. Key to it all imo is JJ Redick.
Note this quote from LeBron about LAL hiring JJ:
“I wanted the Lakers, as a player and as a fan of the franchise, to be able to hire the coach that should be there,” James said. “Not only as I’m finishing my career, but long after I’m gone because there’s been so many guys in that seat over the last few years. And to be able to find someone that could be stable in that position is very key for any franchise.”
LeBron has been very fair about not demanding the Lakers throw away the future to help the present. He did not do that for any of his previous teams. 7 years as a Laker now matches 7 with Cleveland. LeBron James will proudly go into the HOF as a Los Angeles Laker.