The Los Angeles Lakers have made some bold moves that have turned heads these past few days. The team drafted LeBron James’ son Bronny with the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft. A few days ago, the Lakers front office hired JJ Redick as the team’s new head coach, leading to Nick Young’s reaction on Gil’s Arena.
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Gilbert Arenas had a positive outlook on JJ Redick being hired as the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, believing JJ would take the team to the promised land. Now, as per the sources, Redick claims he did not speak to LeBron James until after he took up the Lakers on that offer.
As the conversation went on, Nick Young started mumbling a few things.
“I wish I could wake up white man and do some sh*t I wish I could’ve… ‘I’ve never talked to LeBron’. You believe that sh*t?”
Nick Young repeated JJ Redick’s comments as a joke because it did not seem like the former NBA champion believed a word of what Redick had to say. And he may have been insinuating that Redick did indeed speak about the job with James before taking it up.
Now, Rashard McCants, on the other hand, thinks that JJ Redick will be out of a job within two years. He said, “I’m telling y’all he going to get fired in two years…” The NBA veteran also highlighted how Redick may have the playing experience but he won’t be able to coach veteran players who have achieved more than he did during his playing days.
McCants was adamant that JJ Redick was a perfect fit to coach young players who had just come into the league. But he will have a hard time getting his message and ideology across with players like LBJ and Anthony Davis, to name a few.
Matt Barnes gives his take on JJ Redick
There has been speculation about Redick being the man for the job. For someone who has never had any experience coaching in the NBA, former NBA player, Matt Barnes believes Redick will do a great job, nonetheless.
“As a player and as somebody who knows JJ and played with JJ for a short time, he’s a brother of mine too, that motherf***er know the game. He’s super smart… Even if we say it’s privilege, I mean, he can’t do a worse job than anybody else that’s going in there”.
JJ Redick’s relationship with LeBron James, starting a podcast together, is something that is often brought into the argument. Taking the former Duke player as a head coach over other more qualified coaches surely does make some people doubt how Redick was able to land the job.
But the Lakers’ HC had mentioned in an interview had revealed,
“He (King James) didn’t provide any advice… LeBron and I did not talk about the Lakers job until Thursday afternoon about 30 minutes after I was offered the job. And that was very intentional on both our parts.”
But now that Redick is at the helm of the Lakers’ head coaching position, let’s see how far he takes this team that is in a win-now mode in LeBron’s twilight years.
