EL SEGUNDO — JJ Redick addressed the burning issue right up front Monday afternoon, when he met the Southern California media as the new coach of the Lakers.
“I’ve never coached in the NBA before. I don’t know if you guys have heard that,” he quipped.
It’s about all we have heard, to be honest. But if first impressions mean anything, this just might work.
The bold experiment here is to entrust the immediate future of one of the sport’s flagship franchises to someone whose sole experience as a coach involves fourth-graders. But there’s a more measured way of thinking about this: Rob Pelinka just hired a guy who has a breadth of experience in the NBA in other ways, whose main mentor throughout his basketball life is Mike Krzyzewski, and who seems capable of introducing new ways of thinking to an organization that has operated like a mom-and-pop grocery store for way too long.
Yes, the Lakers likely will build out an analytics department. Yes, player development will become a serious priority – and if Pelinka is serious at all about life after LeBron, and developing the talent that can maintain the franchise’s forward momentum, he’ll resist the urge to package the three first-round draft picks with which he could make a deal this summer and will use the No. 17 pick this Wednesday on someone who can contribute reasonably quickly.
But this is going to go beyond personnel, either incoming or returning. And yes, Redick said Monday that he and his podcast partner, LeBron James, did not discuss Redick’s contention for the Lakers’ job until a half hour or so after Redick had been offered the job last Thursday,
“That was very intentional on both our parts,” Redick said. “I had an understanding that he did not want to be involved in this. And for me, I didn’t want to go down the path of hypotheticals, with someone I consider a friend and someone I have a great deal of respect for. So for us, it just came down to literally Thursday afternoon. And I talked to him for about 15, 20 minutes and got off the phone. That was it.”
Make that ex-podcast partner, by the way. Redick said that “for the time being, and hopefully it’s a very, very long time, I am excommunicated from the content space, so there will be no podcast.”
So instead of discussing X’s and O’s for a general audience in “Mind The Game,” they’ll keep their strategy discussions private. That makes sense.
Redick talked Monday about adaptability, about the “desire to serve players, to serve the Lakers organization, to serve our fans,” and about “competition and performance, collaboration, leadership.”
And I’m sure he already has been introduced to the concept of Laker Exceptionalism, noting that “the expectation is a championship.”
So how will this differ from the previous administrations?
We know Redick is a communicator, from his time as a podcaster and ESPN analyst. He’s polished in front of cameras and microphones, though a little competitive fire seeped out when he responded to a question about any misconceptions that have come up in the discussion over his pursuit of this job by saying, “I don’t give a (expletive).”
He said the coaching bug first nipped at him during his final days as a player with Dallas, when he said he and then-Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle talked about it at length. Redick interviewed for the Toronto job last year, and he said it was after that experience that he knew he wanted to coach at this level, so he spent much of this season discussing the concept with friends in the league and envisioning how it might work. Those conversations, talking to players and coaches on his podcasts and through his ESPN work, set up this moment.
“I just felt like, this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said. “I mean, I brought it up: I had zero coaching experience in the NBA. But I would argue that I’m very experienced, and it started 22 years ago when I went to Duke, and I got to play for Coach K for four years, then 15 years as (an NBA) player.”
It’s not all about strategy and player usage and player buy-in, although with professionals the latter can be vitally important. Redick talked about establishing standards, maintaining dialogue, establishing a culture of competition but one that includes joy, saying: “The pursuit of greatness can’t be miserable.”
And through all of those NBA seasons he’s undoubtedly grown to understand that internal conflict comes with the territory, a given among a collection of strong-willed people. It’s “a natural thing in a competitive sport,” he said. “Confrontation to me is about conflict resolution, conflict avoidance and being direct, being open.”
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So what happens, I asked him, when something comes up that has you saying, “didn’t see that coming?”
“My expectation around something coming up and challenges, on the court, off the court, the scrutiny, all that stuff, I have the highest of expectations that things are going to be there,” he said. “And yet I recognize it’s probably going to be worse than I could imagine.
“In terms of how I would handle it, look: I don’t know. What’s the situation? Rob and I talked during this process about a very specific thing, and it goes back to one of my earlier answers: Some things can’t be avoided. Some things I think can be avoided if you set those standards and expectations early. And so when you get to game 60 and something happens, you’ve already sort of built in the system for how to deal with that.”
If Redick gets to game 60 before something screwy happens, things will be going quite well.
jalexander@scng.com