When word first emerged that the Los Angeles Lakers were considering Duke legend JJ Redick as their next coach, it seemed an unlikely possibility. No one questions Redick’s basketball intelligence. He built a solid and considerable NBA career and overcame a lot of disdain from fans and others who hated him largely because he was a cartoonish Duke villain.
villain.
He drew a lot of praise for his podcasting career too, where he has been imaginative, decisive and insightful.
But he’s never coached, and for some people, that’s an issue. In fact, some people think the only reason he’s even being considered is because he co-hosts a podcast with LA star LeBron James, which doesn’t make much sense, and also because they are friends, which makes more sense.
James is pushing 40 but he’s still a highly effective basketball player and you could make an argument that keeping him happy is a major concern for the Lakers, particularly if another team picks his son Bronny in the upcoming draft and James decides to finish his career playing with his eldest son and said team, which apparently his contract would allow him to do.
It’s fair to ask questions about Redick’s coaching chops because, after all, he’s never coached. It’s fair to wonder if his hire would cause locker room issues due to his relationship with James.
At the same time, you have to put those concerns aside and ask yourself: would he actually be a good coach?
And while it’s one of those things you can’t know until you do, you can certainly say this: Redick is keenly intelligent, highly competitive and has vast NBA experience to draw on.
No one who pays much attention to Redick questions his basic intelligence. He easily built his podcast career into something truly significant and parlayed that into an ESPN gig. In his podcasts and on ESPN, he has shown that he understands the game. He also understands how to stir things up, which might or might not be useful in coaching (see his comments about plumbers and Bob Cousy or about Larry Bird for examples).
He also had four years at Duke under Mike Krzyzewski where he was exposed to not just superb coaching and communication skills but also various aspects of team building, sports psychology and business management principles.
Could he pull it off? Could he overcome the skeptics and the possible poor locker-room dynamics?
Well…yes. He would have a learning curve but Redick has the potential to be an outstanding coach. His bigger problem is that James is near the end of his career and there isn’t much talent in the pipeline. The plan is to build the team around Anthony Davis, but Davis has had a poor injury history and at 31, he’s not all that young either. That’s a lot younger than James, but James hasn’t struggled with injuries the way Davis has.
The thing about Redick though is that he’s always been underestimated. People see his confidence and mistake it for cockiness. They overlook the intense desire to compete and the willingness to work harder than anyone else. We saw it at Duke, when he made the leap from a great shooter to a great basketball player. We saw it in the NBA too, when he went from a marginal player to a guy who was in high demand.
Combine intelligence with an insane work ethic and you get Redick.
We’re confident that he would learn what he needs in order to be a good coach. The only question we’d have with Redick is this: could he be patient enough to deal with guys who are not as smart or motivated as he is?
We’re not comparing him to Magic Johnson as a player, but when he was briefly coaching, Johnson quickly found out he wasn’t patient enough to deal with players who lacked his brilliance. Same thing happened to Jerry West.
