Kevin Durant’s Former Podcast Co-Host Impressed With JJ Redick’s Cheeky Back And Forth With Lakers Reporter

Eddie Gonzalez has produced and hosted several podcasts over the last few years, including FanDuel’s ‘Run It Back’ and Boardroom’s ‘The ETCs with Kevin Durant’. He’s a popular figure online thanks to his sharp wits and recently, he spotted the same acuity in LA’s new head coach, JJ Redick.

Gonzalez saw a clip of Redick tactfully handling a leading question by the media and reshared it on his X account, writing, “Can’t outpod a podder.“

The Lakers’ new head coach has not forgotten the tools he picked up during his media days. In the clip Gonzalez shared, a reporter was questioning JJ Redick about his starting forward, Rui Hachimura. “Do you think he [Rui] can take that next step with you guys?”

“What is the next step?” Redick fired back. When the reporter quipped “You tell me,” JJ called him out on his tactics.

“You tell me. You’re creating a narrative, you tell me. What is his next step? I don’t care about what the next step for Rui is, I care about how he impacts winning on our team,” the Lakers’ head coach coolly answered.

After retiring from basketball, JJ Redick first worked at ESPN and boomed in popularity through his frequent appearances on ‘First Take’. He then hosted ‘The Old Man and the Three’ which quickly became one of the hottest basketball podcasts.

Finally, Redick followed it up with ‘Mind the Game’ alongside LeBron James and cemented himself as a top figure in online sports analytics before making the shift to coaching. All this media experience seems to be coming in handy when he fields questions about the Lakers.

Redick has a clear issue with modern basketball coverage

As someone who would discuss the happenings in the NBA world during his podcasting days, JJ knows just how easy it is for a coach’s words to be taken out of context and shaped into a controversy. But that isn’t his biggest gripe with sports journalism.

“I think what annoys me is that the game gets lost. That the things that I grew up watching, and the things I grew up being talked about, that has been lost,” Redick explained last year on Dan Le Batard’s talk show.

Above everything else, JJ just loves basketball. He started the ‘Mind the Game’ pod with LeBron in order to start conversations about the game and how it’s played. It irks him when members of the media don’t follow suit.

That’s part of the reason the first-time head coach has vowed to stay away from social media. Unfortunately for fans, this means that we will have to wait – at least until the off-season – to hear more breakdowns and analyses from the mind of JJ Redick.