Lakers embrace ‘innovation’ by hiring JJ Redick as head coach

EL SEGUNDO — The Lakers, and specifically General Manager and Vice President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka, know JJ Redick doesn’t have the typical profile and resume for an incoming NBA head coach.

Not only are they more than OK with that, but it’s a factor about Redick that appealed to the Lakers during their seven-week coaching search before agreeing to terms with Redick last Thursday and officially introducing him on Monday.

“When we set out on the journey to name the next Lakers coach, we really had in mind concepts around innovation and challenging ourselves to be forward-thinking,” Pelinka said during Redick’s introductory news conference at the team’s practice facility on Monday afternoon. “Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in patterns of being in a sea of sameness and doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. But when we embarked on this search, it was really important for us to see if we could do something a little bit different. And quickly in our conversations with JJ, it was very evident that he had a unique perspective and philosophy on basketball and how it’s to be taught.

“When we sat down in Chicago at the [NBA draft] combine [in May], we shared a basketball philosophy that was very similar. And it was based on high-level strategy. It was based on a certain way of communicating with players and teaching them. And probably most importantly, prioritizing player development.”

The resume of the former Duke star is well known by now: Redick played in the NBA for 15 seasons (four with the Clippers) and retired in 2021, averaging 12.8 points on 41.5% 3-point shooting for his career.

He has no professional or college coaching experience, and hasn’t coached above the youth level – something he humorously embraced as he looked across a gym filled with team employees, media members and some of his new players.

“I have never coached in the NBA before,” Redick said with a straight face. “I don’t know if you guys have heard that.”

“I have zero coaching experience in the NBA, but I would argue that I’m very experienced. And it started 22 years ago when I went to Duke and I got to play for Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] for four years, spent 15 years as a player.”

After retiring as a player, Redick immediately became an analyst/broadcaster for ESPN. He has also hosted podcasts since 2016, including, “The Old Man and the Three” which is part of the ThreeFourTwo Productions company he co-founded, and “Mind the Game”, which he co-hosted with Lakers star LeBron James since March.

Redick won’t be podcasting anymore, saying that “for the time being, and hopefully it’s a very long time, I’m excommunicated from the content space.”

But he made it clear that all of his experiences since retiring helped him get ready for this moment.

“Honestly, the last three years have been invaluable in preparing me for this moment,” Redick said. “Being able to connect to players, talking to them on the podcast, being in coaching interviews with ESPN, calling games, analyzing the game in three different formats. All of that has helped prepare me to be an NBA head coach.”

Rick Carlisle, the current Indiana Pacers coach and former Dallas Mavericks coach, “really planted the seed about coaching” for Redick during Redick’s two months with the Mavericks before he retired later that year.

But it wasn’t until after Redick interviewed for the Toronto Raptors’ head coaching vacancy last offseason, which went to Darko Rajaković, that Redick knew he wanted to be a head coach in the NBA.

So for the last year, he spent a lot of time talking to coaches, GMs and people close to him within the league to pick their brains. Then he started journaling about coaching, envisioning what it would look like.

“My motivations for doing this, it starts with a very simple foundation of service,” Redick said. “I think about the greatest moments, especially towards the end of my career, was about helping players.

“And so it starts with the desire to serve players, to serve the Lakers organization, to serve our fans. It’s also about competition and performance, collaboration, leadership. These are the things that drive me.”

Redick isn’t the first former NBA player to become an NBA coach without previous professional/collegiate experience.

That isn’t the innovation the Lakers were speaking about.

It’s about changing the way the Lakers operate on a daily basis and how they develop their players, which starts with Redick.

“JJ and I have had some really robust conversations around innovation and sort of even gamifying player development,” Pelinka said. “If you think about a 20-year-old basketball player today and maybe a 20-year-old basketball player, I don’t know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, the [mediums] of learning are completely different.

“Kids and athletes are learning in new and innovative ways. So we’ve talked about how do we translate coach Reddick’s offensive system to [an] app-based or a phone-based deliverable where players can be buying into a philosophy and learning it in a way that meets today’s young player. Innovation has got to be at the core of that.

“We have a vision for, to your point of hiring out his support staff in sort of this tech, bullpen way of getting innovative minds to help bring his basketball strategy and bring his basketball philosophy to life in a way that our players can grasp it, learn it and actually grow their basketball IQ. There’s no one in the room that would argue that JJ is not one of the highest basketball IQ players and thinkers in today’s game. How do we now take that and deliver it to our players? That’s our goal here and something we’re really, really excited about.”

Pelinka added: “This new (salary) cap system that we’re now under an NBA, there’s a hard system with a first and second apron. And I could get into all the details, but at the core of that is going to be the importance of a great franchise like the Lakers modernizing and leaning into developing our young players and building that. And with players here like Max Christie and Jalen Hood-Schifino and Austin Reaves and Rui [Hachimura] and on and on, it became evident that one of JJ’s passions was bringing some of the incredible things he’s done in basketball thinking and in basketball content to player development as we build out that.”

Redick said he didn’t speak with James – who must decide this week whether to exercise his player option to return to the Lakers next season or to become a free agent – about the team’s lengthy coaching search until a 15-minute conversation after the Lakers offered the job to him last Thursday. But Redick has spoken extensively with fellow Lakers star Anthony Davis, who was more involved than James in the team’s hiring process.

Redick sounds ready to get to work.

“This process has been surreal, to say the least,” said Redick, who succeeds Darvin Ham, who was fired after two seasons. “I take this responsibility very seriously.. … The Lakers have some of the most passionate fans around the world, and the expectation is a championship, and so it’s my job to deliver a championship-caliber team. That’s what I signed up for.”

Lakers players including Spencer Dinwiddie, Christian Wood and Gabe Vincent attended the news conference.

Redick spoke optimistically about the Lakers’ roster, saying championship expectations are “reasonable. I don’t look at the current roster as being that far off from being a championship-caliber team.”