The Los Angeles Lakers are set to interview ESPN NBA analyst JJ Redick for the franchise’s head coaching job this weekend. A strong performance is expected to propel Redick to the forefront of the head coaching search, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
The report from Wojnarowski confirms reporting from media rival Shams Charania of The Athletic, who has been insistent all along that Redick was high on the team’s list of candidates for the open role. The Lakers appear to have pivoted back to Redick after swinging and missing on UConn coach Dan Hurley earlier this week.
Redick spoke with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka last month at the Chicago draft combine, according to Wojnarowski. This additional interview this weekend will dive deeper into what the role will entail should Redick ultimately land the job.
Redick has never coached high level basketball, but had a productive 15-year NBA career and has since turned into a successful podcaster, hosting two shows about the NBA, one of which is with Lakers star LeBron James. Additionally, Redick has settled into his role alongside Doris Burke and Mike Breen on ESPN’s top announcing team for its NBA media package.
Redick interviewed for the Charlotte Hornets job that ultimately went to Boston Celtics assistant Charles Lee, and has made it clear that he wants to coach. The opportunity to potentially coach James, as well as veteran Anthony Davis, will certainly be appealing for a first role as a head coach.
Doris Burke made American professional sports history on Thursday night when she called Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks. Burke became the first woman to serve as a TV analyst for any major men's professional championship event.
Burke, a mainstay on ESPN basketball broadcasts over the years, has teamed up with the No. 1 announcing team for the network this season alongside play-by-play announcer Mike Breen and color analysts Doc Rivers, and later, JJ Redick.
Redick made sure to recognize Burke for her achievement during SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt.
"I do have a final word though, Scott," Redick said before the segment with Van Pelt ended. "I do have one final word. I just want to say how proud I am of my teammate Doris Burke, who made history tonight calling this NBA Finals game. Look, I'm a newbie at this. I called my first tonight. It's meaningless in the grand scheme of things. What she did tonight is historic. I am so proud of her. I love you. It's so great working with you."
"Don't make me cry," Burke replied. "You're the best teammate, so thank you."
The duo has plenty of chemistry with Breen on the air, and they'll have a chance to continue to showcase what they can do throughout the rest of the NBA Finals.
Game 2 is set for Sunday night in Boston. Tip-off is set for 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
The Los Angeles Lakers could part ways with coach Darvin Ham this offseason after the team's first-round exit at the hands of the reigning champion Denver Nuggets, who have now bounced Los Angeles from the playoffs in two straight seasons.
Although it's not yet been made official, Ham's exit has been widely speculated upon, and some names have already been floated as possible replacements for the Lakers' potential vacancy.
Among those who are considered "real candidates" include both Tyronn Lue and JJ Redick, according to ESPN's Lakers reporter Dave McMenamin.
Dave McMenamin (@Mcten) discusses the #Lakers future at Head Coach, including the possibility that they look at JJ Redick to replace Darvin Ham pic.twitter.com/fmoG4vniqh
"JJ [Redick] certainly is a real candidate if they do open up this coaching search," McMenamin said Thursday during an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show. "There's, I'd say, half a dozen folks out there, including possibly the guy who just lost last night against the Mavericks, Tyronn Lue ... that there will be a process there that there are several viable candidates that will get an interview."
McMenamin noted that Ham had not yet met with the Los Angeles front office regarding his future, so there's still no guarantee that he won't be brought back for the 2024-25 season.
Redick, of course, recently started a podcast with Lakers superstar LeBron James dubbed Mind the Game, where the pair break down the X's and O's of basketball together.
It's clear that James holds him in high regard, so if a vacancy does open up, it stands to reason that Redick, who has reportedly interviewed for the Charlotte Hornets' vacancy, would be a realistic Lakers candidate.
The Los Angeles Lakers are going to eventually pick a head coach to lead them into next season and when that happens, it won't really matter who breaks the news three minutes before the rest of the world has it. But being cynical isn't as fun as keeping score in the Adrian Wojnarowski-Shams Charania parlor game, which has an interesting new chapter based on some at-odds reporting on L.A.'s search.
Less than 48 hours ago, The Athletic's Charania shoveled some more fuel into the JJ Redick hot-stove by establishing the player-turned-podcaster-slash-broadcaster as the leader in the clubhouse.
The Los Angeles Lakers are zeroing in on JJ Redick as the front-runner to be the franchise’s next head coach, league and media industry sources told The Athletic.
No final decision has been made yet, and the Lakers still have steps remaining in their head-coaching search process, league sources said. But the indications are strong that Redick is their leading choice at this stage.
The Lakers have had preliminary contact with Hurley and the sides are planning to escalate discussions in the coming days, sources told ESPN. Hurley has been at the forefront of the Lakers' search from the beginning of the process, even while the organization has done its due diligence interviewing several other candidates, sources said.
So one can see the problem. Redick and Hurley can't both coach the Lakers unless one of them wants to leave a great gig to become an assistant.
At times like these it's important to parse the language and point out that we're all in this situation because step-by-step reporting of each and every twist and turn of the process has been turned into an opportunity for news. In the not-so-distant past a consumer would only hear about a team selecting a new coach when that coach had been selected. It was less entertaining but that world didn't require a dictionary and thesaurus to divine meaning from the verbs included in every stage.
And that's not a slight. Woj and Shams are at the top of the field. But there's a real chance neither Redick nor Hurley coaches the Lakers next year, despite all the "zeroing in" and "targeting." In the court of public opinion, fair or otherwise, Shams is the Redick guy now and Woj is the Hurley guy. No one is going to do the work of parsing all the semantics and journalism to give either an out if life happens and talks don't go well or offers aren't accepted or matched.
Until there's a final decision the winner in these types of situations tends to be the person with the most recent information, which would be Wojanarowski. There's certainly something to be said about waking up in the morning to a legitimately shocking chyron on the screen and considering an event horizon that would profoundly impact both pro and college basketball.
It's nice to be reminded every so often that the Woj-Shams sideshow can be a lot of fun once a person gets out of the weeds and learns to embrace the bombs.
