JJ Redick has made a seamless transition from playing 15 years in the NBA to now coaching the Los Angeles Lakers.
Despite no previous coaching experience, Redick won 50 games in his rookie season and now has the Lakers off to a good start once again.
Redick has gotten to play and coach a number of great players over the years, one of them being Chris Paul who announced he will be retiring at the end of this season.
Redick and Paul were teammates during their time with the L.A. Clippers, more known as the Lob City era with Blake Griffin and Deandre Jordan.
When asked about his thoughts on Paul’s retirement, Redick detailed what he thinks his legacy will be once he steps away from the game of basketball after this season.
“It will be whatever people decide it as,” Redick said. “I’m not going to craft a narrative, I just know him as a human being, a teammate and a brother. The arc of our relationship is very interesting from going to a decade plus of quite literally hating each other to feeling like he is a part of my family. Getting to watch him evolve as a player, as a competitor, as a leader in the later stages, particularly after I retired has actually been really fun for me. It’s rare that you see guys who have accomplished as much as he accomplished to grow in the ways that he grew, both as a player and a person. We used to talk about this on the Clippers all the time, squeezing the juice out of a possession and he was the master at that. He squeezed the juice out of every possession and that’s the micro version of him is just manipulating the game, thinking the game, squeezing the juice out of every possession. He squeezed the juice out of his career, he’s done that for over two decades and it’s remarkable for a player his size to be able to compete at that level for so long and so consistently. The game will miss him, I’ll say that. The game will miss him and I’m sure he’ll have some amazing opportunities in retirement.”
As Redick mentioned, he and Paul used not to see eye to eye and were enemies early on. The Lakers coach spoke about what led to seeing Paul in a negative light early on in his NBA career and how they great close after becoming teammates.
“My rookie year, I was in a suit and this is when we hated each other,” he continued. “And he came over during a dead ball, he was in the left corner and I was behind the bench. He was like, ‘Yeah, this is a lot different from college, isn’t it JJ?’ And I said, ‘I f—king hate that guy.’ We had our battles. When I was his teammate, what I loved the most was our non-verbal synergy. And it is hard to capture that in a single play or a single moment. But, I always talk about teams feeling like an organism that function together and when a team is really functioning together, there’s a connective tissue to that. I don’t think there was a player that I played with that I felt more of a connective tissue than Chris Paul.”
Paul had a fierce competitiveness and it showed on the court throughout his 20-plus seasons in the NBA. Even though he and Redick had their differences at first, it is great to see how their relationship has matured and grown over time.
JJ Redick challenging Austin Reaves to step up as leader
After his long NBA career playing with some greats, JJ Redick knows what a leader looks like. With the likes of LeBron James and Luka Doncic on the roster, Redick is still challenging Austin Reaves to embrace a leadership role as he continues his positive trajectory.
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