On Thursday, JJ Redick agreed to a four-year contract to become the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. On paper, this is one of the most surprising hires in recent NBA history. Redick has no coaching experience at the professional or collegiate level and has never worked in a front office. He had a long and successful playing career in the NBA, but unlike many of the inexperienced hires, he wasn’t a point guard.
No, Redick has been tapped for one of the most high-pressure coaching jobs in sports, bringing with him 15 years as a three-point shooting guru, eight years as a podcaster and three years as a TV commentator. Whether his unconventional resume translates into success or failure as a head coach remains to be seen for years, but the hire will have an immediate impact on the Lakers and key players around the league. So, let’s look at the aftermath. Who are the winners and losers of the Redick hire?
Let’s start with the obvious: Coaching the Lakers comes with a host of challenges (trust me, we’ll get to some of them), but you still get to coach the Lakers. There’s a reason for the pressure that comes with the job: the entire basketball world has its eyes on you. All of your players want to play for you, and you usually have access to more talent than other teams in the league. Even now, during the team’s relative downturn in history, leading the Lakers means having LeBron James and Anthony Davis in the mix.
This is an incredible opportunity for any coach. It’s truly amazing for a coach without experience. Redick has interviewed for other head coaching positions in the past. He would never have had the opportunity to win right now in Charlotte or Toronto that James or Davis give him now. He would also never have had the platform that comes with this job. If Redick wins with the Hornets or Raptors, he’s no different than any other winning coach. Winning with the Lakers suddenly gives him a level of prestige (and a salary, albeit a relatively modest one) that’s not available anywhere else in the league. It’s a high-risk job, but it’s also a high-reward job. Redick wouldn’t have taken the job if he wasn’t prepared for the former. It’s the latter that ultimately led him to take it.
Loser: JJ Redick
When the Lakers were searching for a coach for 2022, Redick himself pointed out on ESPN’s “Get Up” why the job wasn’t necessarily desirable: “Unless you start building your team like every other team in the NBA, I don’t think this is a good job in the modern NBA.”
For better or worse, the Lakers are not run like a normal NBA team. The Lakers front office is one of the smallest in basketball in terms of personnel dedicated to scouting, analytics, etc., but it is one of the largest in basketball in terms of how many powerful people have their hands on the wheel when it comes to important basketball decisions. Rob Pelinka is nominally in charge. Linda Rambis is a longtime adviser to Jeanie Buss and has more power than her title of “executive director of special projects” would suggest. Kurt Rambis holds an equally ambiguous and influential position within the franchise. Magic Johnson complained about how involved President of Business Operations Tim Harris was in basketball operations during his time as team president. Buss’ brothers Joey and Jesse have made their mark in the G League and scouting departments, respectively. When important decisions are made in this franchise, who is making them?
And lately, most of those big decisions have been wrong. The 2020 Lakers built a championship lineup by placing three-pointers and defensive wings around James and Davis. They’ve spent the last four years dismantling that concept. They’ve dumped asset after asset into the hopes of finding a point guard who could ease LeBron’s ball-handling burden, but never found one. They haven’t found a center who can shoot well enough to take the pressure off Davis and be a long-term player. Wings are few and far between. Sometimes it seems like the only principle guiding the Lakers’ moves is prestige. They add stars. They add former stars. They add top draft busts who once believed they would be stars. Sometimes it works. But most of the time it doesn’t. It’s pretty hard to win a championship when your acquisitions are so heavily dependent on points per game.
The Lakers have had six head coaches since Phil Jackson retired in 2011. Redick will be their seventh. If this brain trust doesn’t improve, it won’t be long before someone else becomes their eighth. The Lakers fired Frank Vogel two years after winning a championship. They fired Darvin Ham one year after reaching the Western Conference Finals. If things go wrong in Los Angeles (which recent history suggests is likely), this front office has been happy to use coaches to shift the blame in the past. And without a traditional coaching background to fall back on, a failure in Los Angeles could doom Redick’s promising career before it really begins. As Redick himself said, for the Lakers to do a good job, they need to act like other teams do. They have never shown a willingness to do so at any point in their history.
This is a double win for James. Let’s start with the obvious. Assuming James re-signs with the Lakers, he’ll now be playing for Redick, his (former???) podcast co-host. Of course, it’s unclear how deep the relationship between the two is. Redick and James never played together in the NBA. The Mind the Game podcast only started in March. The Lakers didn’t hire Dwyane Wade as their coach. The two are professional. At the very least, friendly. We don’t know how friendly it is, but it suits James.
It’s clear that James wouldn’t have agreed to appear on the podcast if he hadn’t endorsed Redick as a basketball thinker. While understanding basketball tactics and being able to execute it within the organization of a professional team are two different things, it’s hard to imagine James disagreeing violently with Redick on strategic matters. They are in broad agreement about how the Lakers should play to win. With James, such agreement is never guaranteed. From that perspective, this is a clear win.
But James has kept his distance well throughout this search. Rich Paul told Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes that James is “not involved” in the search for Ham’s replacement. Nearly all of the reports echo that opinion, and from his perspective, it’s just a clever PR move. Will the hiring of Redick be a success? James was an early adopter, just like he was with Malik Monk and Migos. But what if it doesn’t work out? James can claim his hands are clean. That’s a pretty big deal, considering his Machiavellian reputation. A few years ago, when the Russell Westbrook trade fell apart, James took disproportionate blame for the failure. This time, he’s done enough to protect himself. For the greatest player of all time, it’s a win-win.
In the same interview with Haynes, Paul said, “At this point, the Lakers should be more focused on Anthony Davis than LeBron. Redick would not have been the preferred option for Davis, according to Marc Stein. That would have been James Borrego, who played with Davis briefly in New Orleans over a decade ago.”
Is there a reason for that, other than their pre-existing relationship? That’s difficult. Redick’s coaching philosophy is still evolving, so it’s hard to say if he’ll get the most out of Davis. Borrego didn’t have a big man like him when he coached the Hornets. But it’s notable that Redick didn’t vote for Davis as an All-Defensive player last season. Not a good start to their coexistence, considering Davis has been trying so hard to win the Defensive Player of the Year award thus far.
Winner: Broadcasters from around the world
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, during a recent appearance on Get Up, made a noteworthy point about the unusual nature of Redick as a candidate: “Frankly, his interview is on a podcast with LeBron James,” Windhorst said. “They’ve done a thorough analysis of the Lakers’ offense, they’ve done a thorough analysis of how they run things, and that’s available for the whole world to see, including the Lakers’ front office.”
Of course, Redick didn’t get the job solely because of the podcast, but more broadly, Redick was able to leverage his position at ESPN to rise to one of the highest-profile coaching jobs in sports with no coaching experience — is this a model that can be established going forward?
Redick is not the first announcer to make the transition to coaching. Steve Kerr made the move in 2014, but he also worked in the Phoenix Suns front office. Others have tried, TNT’s Kenny Smith famously interviewed for several jobs. But Redick is unique in his combination of inexperience and instant success, at least as a candidate. Not every announcer can replicate Redick’s success. Success in media is ultimately down to personality to some extent. But the broad strokes are replicable. Owners are less entrenched in the day-to-day happenings of the league. They’re more likely to have stronger opinions on TV analysts than on unknown assistant coaches.
That may not be enough to get the job, but it’s a stepping stone. If other analysts can use the platform of studio programming and game coverage to showcase Redick’s creativity and likability, they too could be given a coaching opportunity — or, at the very least, a chance to command a higher broadcast salary. Redick’s hiring is a win for the industry as a whole.
Loser: Rob Pelinka
Pelinka has overseen three head coaching searches so far. Two of them were fairly public. The Lakers offered the job to Ty Lue in 2019. Lue turned it down because he was only offered a three-year contract and asked for his input on the staff. This time, Redick got the job after Dan Hurley turned it down. The Lakers were widely mocked for their low offer. And now Pelinka has settled on Redick. In an ideal world, he’d find a gem and Redick would be able to serve as head coach for the foreseeable future.
But it’s another to throw yourself at Frank Vogel and respected assistant Darvin Ham, who have experience winning elsewhere. The hire was a big risk, given Redick’s background. If it doesn’t pay off, well, let’s just say it’s not unusual for a general manager to hire a fourth head coach. James has been so proactive and proactive in trying to avoid responsibility for this hire that Pelinka has no one else to use as an excuse if it flops.
Does that mean he’s in trouble? Not necessarily. Frankly, it’s impossible to know what’s going on with the Lakers. Somehow Vogel has been made the scapegoat for the trade made by Pelinka, who lost his job in the Westbrook deal, and supported by James. Pelinka, by virtue of his status as Kobe Bryant’s closest ally, is thus far virtually invincible within the organization. If he ever loses his position, we may never even know it. The Lakers’ troubled power structure may be able to take power without taking away his titles.
But the pressure is on now. James is about to turn 40. Davis is well into his 30s. The luster of the 2020 title has faded. If this hire doesn’t work out, the Lakers could very well be heading for a very dark five-plus years. If that kind of downturn comes, it seems almost impossible for the Lakers to get through it without making meaningful changes in the front office. They can’t keep firing coaches forever.
