Getty Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick with Bronny James.
After an extended coaching search, the Los Angeles Lakers landed on JJ Redick to take over the head job. He was linked to the job for weeks but his lack of coaching experience led to the team doing their due diligence.
Redick has never coached at the NBA level and there were plenty of more experienced options the Lakers didn’t even look at. Jared Dudley was on the Lakers when they won a championship in 2020 and is now an assistant coach for the Dallas Mavericks. He hasn’t gotten looked at for head coaching jobs but made his aspirations clear while taking a bit of a jab at Redick.
“I want to head coach, that’s my dream. … Some of us aren’t JJ Redick and get to go right away,” Dudley told ClutchPoints’ Joey Mistretta in a July 9 interview.
It’s also worth noting that Dudley and Redick played together on the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2013-14 season. While his comments come off as bitter against Redick, he could just be pointing out the fact that it’s odd the former guard would get a head coach without ever being an assistant.
Redick has been in the mix for other head coaching jobs before so had the Lakers not hired him, it’s possible another team would’ve given him a chance.
Jared Dudley Clarifies Comments
Dudley’s comments were perceived as critical of Redick. It’s true that there are many candidates who haven’t gotten a chance to be a head coach who have much more experience. However, Dudley took to X to explain that his comments weren’t meant as a slight toward Redick.
As Dudley noted, Redick isn’t the first former player to get a chance to be a head coach without prior experience. It has worked in the cases of Steve Kerr and Jason Kidd but Steve Nash couldn’t make it work. Time will tell if Redick has what it takes to have success as a coach.
Anthony Davis Talks JJ Redick
The Lakers were a playoff team last season but got knocked out in the first round. Redick’s job is to get the team back to competing for championships. It appears he plans to do that by trying to feature Anthony Davis more.
The big man is coming off a very good All-Star season where he played 76 games, which was a career high. Davis opened up about the coach’s plans for him.
“[Redick] talked about me being the hub of the offense,” Davis said, per a July 7 column from Ben Golliver of the Washington Post. “That will be different. We won’t know everything until [training] camp when we’re able to get on the floor. We want LeBron [James] to shoot more threes. [Redick] wants to play fast and defend. From what he was telling me, I’m in total agreeance with what he has planned for us. … The goal at the end of the day is still to win a championship. You can’t skip steps.”
If Davis can stay healthy, he’s one of the best players in the NBA but the Lakers have struggled to keep him involved consistently, especially late in games. One of Redick’s most important jobs is figuring out a way to get the ball to Davis consistently in the fourth quarter of games.