JJ Redick’s highly publicized onboarding last June was met with a healthy blend of optimism + pessimism.
On one hand, the organization was bringing on a young basketball mastermind with a hunger to prove his hiring no fluke. Through his basketball commentary on national broadcasts we bore witness to his intelligence from outside the playing court, and through his highly successful podcast run we were introduced to an even further level of wisdom and knowledge base buried beneath the surface of Redick’s outer mojo.
On the other side of the spectrum, the most polarizing franchise in the league was officially hiring the least experienced head coaching candidate in the heavy history of head coaching hires. Redick was by all means a heckuva ball player during his playing days, but aside from his aforementioned media presence the man had simply never coached a basketball game at any level of the sport. When you are steering the front office wheel for a team as iconic as the Lakeshow, you are not settling for anything but the best candidates possible when tasked with finding a head coach. With experienced names like Kenny Atkinson and James Borrego (among others) vying for the position, Rob Pelinka and Jeanie Buss could have gone a number of routes with their final rose.
When news broke that JJ Redick was the organization’s choice, time could only tell if he would turn out to be the right one. We will go ahead and speak for everyone when we say that time has manifested the correctness of the front office’s decision to pull the trigger on “the podcaster”.
