Lakers Coach JJ Redick ‘Wept & Wailed’ After Losing House in Palisades Fire

Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick opened up in emotional terms about the loss of his house in the Pacific Palisades fire, revealing that he “wept and wailed.”

Redick confirmed in an interview with reporters that his family is safe, but his home was lost in the blaze.

“My family and I, we’re processing the self side, the individual side of losing your home and you don’t want to wish that on anybody,” he said in the video published on YouTube by The Los Angeles Times on January 11.

“It’s an awful feeling to lose your home. I think what has happened the last 72 hours from me being up there, and from having a number of people who also had homes in the Palisades who are also staying in the hotel, you really get a sense of just the communal destruction,” Redick added.

“I got back to the hotel, of course my wife and I are emotional. I’m not sure I’ve wept and wailed like that in several years. And she said to me, ‘I was very hesitant to move out here. I was very hesitant to you know for you to go into coaching. I’ve never loved living somewhere more than I loved Brooklyn,'” revealed Redick.

JJ Redick Says He & His Wife Are Struggling With the ‘Loss of Community’ in Pacific Palisades

Redick said he and his wife felt very welcomed in Pacific Palisades.

“We moved out here, and the Palisades community has really been so good to us. That’s the part we’re really struggling with, it’s just the loss of community. I recognize that people make up community, and we’re going to rebuild,” he said.

“All the churches, the schools, the library. It’s all gone. The thing that hit home for us the most, was Tuesday night, the rec center caught on fire and the day we visited the house and decided we wanted to live in the house, we were like, ‘Let’s explore the village,’ and we stumbled on the rec center,” added Redick.

He said the rec center “was like this place we were at every day” and where “everyone we knew was there everyday. It just hurts to lose that. I’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and love that I’ve felt and that my family’s felt from people around the NBA, people in Los Angeles, people in the Palisades community and in our kids’ school community who’ve also lost homes.”

“We’ve obviously all leaned on each other. I can say this, for our family, we’re committed as ever to Los Angeles. We recognize like it’s not just our community that’s been impacted by this,” Redick added. He said if “there is anything we can do to help and lead, we will. We’re still figuring that out. It’s still pretty fresh.”

Reddick added, “We recognize it’s going to be a long process.”

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JJ Redick Says His Family Lost Irreplaceable Mementos in the Palisades Fire

Redick said his wife Chelsea got out “really early.”

She was heading to the airport. “She went home, grabbed our nanny. This was all going on pre-game Tuesday,” he noted in the video interview.

They were “scrambling to find a hotel that had room for them. Got out of there. Got the kids out of school. They’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

When he returned to Los Angeles and went to the hotel, he said he still had “my coach’s uniform on and headed up to Palisades. I just kind of had to see it for myself. I was not prepared. I was not prepared for what I saw. It’s complete devastation and destruction. I had to go kind of a different way to the house. I went through most of the village, and it’s all gone. I don’t think you can ever prepare yourself for something like that.”

“Our home is gone,” Redick added. “Look, we were renting for the year to try to figure out where we wanted to be long term. And everything we owned that was of any importance to us almost 20 years together as a couple and 10 years of parenting was in that house. There’s certain things you can’t replace and that will never be replaced.”

One of them, he said, was an “art project” created by his son. “It was like a charcoal pencil painting of a lighthouse that we had framed above the stairs. You can’t ever replace stuff like that. Memories,” he said. “Certain things were in that house that you can’t replace. The material stuff is whatever.”

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