Los Angeles Lakers head coach J.J. Redick doubled down on his previous comments indicating that he didn’t talk to LeBron James about coaching the team until after an offer was on the table.
“Yeah, I said this at my press conference, and I guess there was a strong reaction,” Redick said when asked when he and James first discussed him coaching the Lakers. “People thought I was capping — is that the correct term? People said that’s cap. I think that means you’re lying. No, it’s the honest truth. … I got the offer on Thursday, June 20th.
“And at — I don’t know — 11:30, I go to lunch with my dad. We sit down for lunch. We order our food. My kids were on a lunch break, so we just walked across campus to the Washington Duke — the little inn there — and sit down for lunch, order the food, and I said, ‘Dad, I gotta go make one phone call real quick.’
“And I — there was just a phone call with LeBron, and that was the first time that we had talked about the possibility of me coaching the Lakers, and obviously, I informed him that there was an offer made, and we had a 15-minute phone conversation.”
Some folks were likely skeptical of Redick’s claim at his press conference because he and James worked on a podcast together not long before the former replaced Darvin Ham as the head coach of the Lakers.
The 40-year-old’s first coaching gig in the NBA will come with plenty of pressure and expectations, as the Lakers are debatably the most successful franchise in the history of the league. Some of the greatest coaches who have ever worked in the NBA — including Phil Jackson and Pat Riley — have led Los Angeles from the sidelines over the years.
But one rumor from months back indicates that the Lakers are incredibly bullish about Redick’s coaching potential. In May, The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Jovan Buha reported that Los Angeles sees him as a “Pat Riley-like coaching prospect.”
“Leaguewide, Redick — a former player and media analyst — has garnered buzz for the position,” Charania and Buha wrote. “The Lakers are infatuated with Redick’s potential, according to league sources, viewing him as a Pat Riley-like coaching prospect who could both help the franchise in the short term and lead it for years.”
Perhaps the relationship that Redick and James have will reap rewards for the Lakers in the 2024-25 season. Los Angeles is trying to re-establish itself as a contender in the Western Conference after the team didn’t make it out of the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs.
Despite having one of the best players in the history of the NBA in James on their roster for the past six seasons, the Lakers haven’t reached the NBA Finals since the year 2020, when the team won its 17th title in franchise history. Los Angeles defeated the Miami Heat in that year’s championship series.
It’s fascinating that Redick is now James’ coach after the two hosted a podcast together earlier in the year, but considering how old the latter is, the duo will be together on the Lakers for a finite amount of time. James is the NBA’s oldest player after all — he will turn 40 years old in December — and is heading into his 22nd season in the league.
