LOS ANGELES — One of the benefits of JJ Redick making the career change from podcaster/broadcaster to Lakers head coach was the relationships he made during his 15-year playing career.
From a roster standpoint, those relationships immediately paid off, with the Lakers having multiple players on their roster who Redick was teammates with before retiring: Luka Doncic, Dorian Finney-Smith, Jaxson Hayes, Maxi Kleber and Shake Milton.
The other side of Redick not being too far removed from his playing days is that there are several individuals throughout the league who coached Redick before he retired as a player after the 2020-21 season.
Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch is among those coaches.
Finch was an assistant coach on Alvin Gentry’s coaching staff for the 2019-20 New Orleans Pelicans team Redick played on – which was Redick’s second-to-last season in the league as a player.
Finch was an assistant for the Toronto Raptors for half of the following season before becoming the Timberwolves’ head coach midway through 2020-21, while Redick played a half season for the Pelicans in 2020-21 before being traded to the Dallas Mavericks and retiring once the season ended.
“It was an absolute pleasure,” Finch responded when asked what it was like coaching Redick before Game 1 of the best-of-seven first-round playoff series between the Lakers and Timberwolves on Saturday night. “It was great. It was a wild season. I mean, it was the season that COVID hit. We started, we lost 13 games in a row at one point. We were on the verge of making the playoffs. We ended up in the bubble – that kind of was an interesting experience.”
Finch added: “But it was interesting to coach JJ because I learned a lot from him. I never coached the shooter at that level and then just [seeing how teams] guarded him so differently than even a lot of really good shooters. So he imparted a lot of tricks of the trade, things that he needed that he had seen through his career. So it’s like anything else, you always learned from really good players. So, not surprised that he’s had success. He’s got a very sharp basketball mind, relates to people extremely well. He’s super competitive. He has all the DNA.”
PLAYOFF SLOGAN
The Lakers revealed their 2025 playoff slogan ahead of Saturday’s game: Unleash Joy.
Redick spoke pregame about what went into that decision.
“From Day One, our team, coaching staff, our team, our players, all of us together decided on four values for the season and what it meant to be a Laker,” he said. “And joy was one those four values.”