Reacting to the JJ Redick News
As of 3:04 PM yesterday, longtime NBA veteran, ESPN talk show anchor, and founder of “The Old Man and the Three” and “Mind the Game” podcasts, JJ Redick, has been hired as the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The deal is for four years and will earn Redick somewhere in the vicinity of $8M per year. The hire comes about a week after UConn championship winning head coach, Dan Hurley, turned down a 6 year, $70M package with the glitzy Los Angeles franchise, leading sources to believe that Redick was the Lakers’ second choice.
In the last day and a half, there have been calls for GM Rob Pelinka and the Lakers’ front office to hire veteran coach, Monty Williams, who was fired by Detroit yesterday after a 14-68 season. However, the Lakers did not waver in their original reporting that Redick was likely to be their next head coach and signed him on the back of two straight seasons as the 7th seed with now Milwaukee assistant coach, Darvin Ham.
Despite it being one of the most sought after jobs in sports due to a rich tapestry of great players and championships, Redick is not in a particularly favorable position as the new head coach of the Lakers. LeBron James will turn 40 next season, and Anthony Davis is in his 30s and aside from his first and last years with LA, has had significant durability issues. Outside of his two aging superstars who admittedly overachieved last season, the Lakers’ supporting cast is ever-changing and often very inconsistent.
Frankly, with the lack of depth and continuity that the Lakers have implemented, I believe they will struggle to make the Play-In tournament in a ridiculously competitive Western Conference. Denver, Dallas, Oklahoma City, and Minnesota are poised to contend for the title. I believe the Pelicans, Grizzlies, and Rockets are built far better than the Lakers and have a stronger blueprint for success this season. The Suns and Clippers are not downgrading their rosters and finished ahead of the Lakers last season. The Kings will be healthier, and the Warriors will be on par with LA at the very least. Even the Spurs and Jazz will cause trouble for West contenders next year with improving young rosters. Quite literally every team besides Portland could be a playoff team in an average conference, so there shouldn’t be so much pressure on the Lakers to perform this year.
But we know that will not be the case in a city that sets unrealistically high expectations for their teams. Redick will be expected to win now, and I do not believe that is a fair expectation for the first time NBA head coach especially given everything I just talked about.
What’s more is that the Lakers have shown no patience with their recent head coaches. Ham, despite a very successful first season in which they reached the conference finals and lost to the eventual champion Nuggets, was fired after two winning seasons. Before Ham, Frank Vogel was canned after three seasons including a championship winning season in his first year. Luke Walton preceded Vogel and appeared to have some leash with the Lakers front office before he was fired after LeBron James’ first season with the team, revealing the underlying problem.
There is a very short list of coaches that have survived long tenures while coaching James. Now, luckily for Redick, he might not have that issue in a few years as James is nearing retirement, but he should be wary of the fact that Paul Silas was let go from Cleveland after James’ first two and half seasons, and that David Blatt, despite having an impressive resume, was dismissed in 2016 after a season and half with a 83-40 record during James’ second stint in Cleveland. Only Mike Brown, Erik Spoelstra, and Ty Lue have outlasted the wrath of James unscathed. The first two are both former Coach of the Year winners, and Lue, along with Spoelstra, is widely regarded as a top-5 coach in the league. Redick has never coached an NBA game.
There is a stark, and slightly concerning contrast between Hurley and Redick especially given that the Lakers have a slight reputation of going for the big names instead of the sensible ones. Hurley is a highly accomplished college coach with no NBA experience that has built success by being a vocal leader and a player’s coach while implementing his own strict system into the UConn program. Redick has no coaching experience and will approach the season relying on his NBA knowledge as a player. He doesn’t lead by voice or by example like Hurley, but rather with his mind. The bottom line is that the two coaches share very few similarities in both resume and style. I worry that the Lakers were chasing after the big name here instead of truly inspecting which coach could have fit the best with their currently constructed roster.
In general, I am a skeptic of the Redick hire but my skepticism is a result of the Lakers’ history of wrongdoings surrounding their coaches, not because of Redick’s credentials. The reality is that Redick is a basketball genius. The Lakers fired Ham because he was not very tactically advanced. Even Anthony Davis complained late in the season about Ham’s lack of game-changing tactics which was one of main signals that changes were coming. The first signal was the formation of the “Mind the Game” podcast which featured a back and forth between Redick and James about tactics and the ins and outs of the game. Redick’s ability to recount play designs and dissect different actions down to every last footstep was extremely impressive and showed the world that whatever he might lack in experience and leadership, he makes up for in basketball smarts.
Additionally, Redick’s prior relationship with James makes him different from Walton, Vogel, and Ham, and was frankly a factor in garnering interest from the front office. Despite what he may say about trying to stay far away from the Lakers’ coaching search, James gave Rob Pelinka the green light on this hire because he and Redick are friends and see basketball through the same lens. If James has a problem with Redick’s coaching, he won’t go behind his back to the front office like he did with Blatt or Ham. He’ll address it to Redick’s face and the two will work it out from there.
Circling back to Redick’s basketball genius, on ESPN broadcasts, Redick’s knowledge and interest in the numbers that impacted winning was evident. He brought an analytical perspective to broadcasts as well as the ability to dumb down complicated plays to viewers at home. That type of tactically advanced coaching is what the Lakers need to couple with their evident talent.
As someone that watched every minute of the NBA Finals and followed the league very closely all year, Redick knows better than anybody that the Celtics’ three-point dominant style of offense is how you win in today’s day and age, and I would not be surprised to see him design an offense that maximizes three-point shooting and emphasizes efficiency. Now, the Lakers cannot shoot anywhere close to as well as the Celtics can which leads me to what I believe is the underlying factor of if Redick’s stay in LA can lift banners into the rafters or if he will be searching for other coaching jobs in three years.
The Lakers need to give Redick a true chance. It’s time for them to accept that they are years away from winning a championship even if they try tricking themselves into believing James and Davis are enough to lift banner 18. If the Lakers only win 35-40 games per year in Redick’s first few seasons, the front office should not press the panic button. He’s a young, brilliant basketball mind who, with time to implement his own coaching staff, strategy, and his own personal authority, has potential to be a great head coach someday.
I believe this hire can work out for both sides if Redick is given leeway and realistic expectations by the fans and the front office. However, it’s up to the Lakers to realize, once and for all, that success will come in the long-term and not right now.