Lakers coach JJ Redick has brought a voice and vision that has enabled the team to become a championship contender. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
It was the humiliating snub that saved a season.
It was the most beautiful embarrassment in Lakers history.
Dan Hurley, thank you.
Thank you for turning down $70 million from the Lakers to stay at UConn. Thank you for walking away from Hollywood to hang out in Storrs. Thank you for doing the unthinkable to a team desperate for the impossible.
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Thank you for the rejection, because it was the beginning of a rebirth.
Because Dan Hurley said no, JJ Redick said yes.
Lakers coach JJ Redick, talking with guards Luka Doncic and Gabe Vincent, has been able to get stars and role players to accept his and the coaching staff’s plan for the team. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Trade of the year.
Can everyone now admit that hiring JJ Redick instead of Hurley last summer has been the most important development in transforming an ordinary team into a potential champion?
Acquiring Luke Doncic was great, but it is Redick who has seamlessly integrated him into the offense.
The emergence of Austin Reaves has been fascinating, but it was Redick who enabled and empowered him.
The renewed inspiration of LeBron James has been impressive, but it’s been based on respect for Redick’s voice and his vision.
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With disarming honesty, unrelenting passion and unvarnished empathy, Redick has guided the Lakers through early-season embarrassments, bonded them through midseason roster changes and now has raised their intensity just in time for a deep spring run.
Read more: LeBron James’ health briefly a concern as Lakers beat Rockets to clinch No. 3 seed
“As a team, I feel like we can win a championship, to be honest with you,” said Reaves after the Lakers’ third-seed-clinching win over the Houston Rockets on Friday night. “The reason of that is, I know that everybody in the locker room believes that and has also bought into whatever your role is to help us do that.”
That belief comes from coaching, from Redick down through his top assistants, Scott Brooks and Nate McMillan, a powerful veteran braintrust that smartly and constantly connects.
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“That’s why I give this coaching staff a lot of credit,” said Reaves. “They come in, they planted their system and they held guys accountable to what they asked them to do and everybody bought into that.”
The head of sales is, of course, Redick, this group curated with his cool mix of brains and humanity that has turned a team into something more closely resembling a family.
He has cried, he has scowled, he has scolded and he has unconditionally supported, and that’s just in the news conferences.
He has, honestly, made more of an impact in one season of coaching than in 15 years in uniform. On Friday I had to ask him, was coaching actually more rewarding than playing?
Lakers coach JJ Redick recounts that he and his family lost their rental house in the deadly Palisades fire during a news conference at the team’s training facility on Jan. 10. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
“Yes” he quickly said.
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“Why?” I asked.
“So I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last six months, I’m not sure,” he said. “But I will say, I think anybody that was around me as a player knows how much I enjoyed the job every day and knows how grateful I was to be in the NBA every day and very grateful to have a 15-year career. I like this more.”
So the flashy former scorer has more fun guiding players than shooting over them, and who knew?
Not me. While I’m now praising him as a great hire, I must acknowledge that I was once among the loudest to fight it.
When the offer was made to Hurley to replace the fired Darvin Ham last spring, I loved the idea. I loved Hurley. I pictured the two-time NCAA defending champion lighting a fire, changing the culture, bringing his East Coast toughness to the soft confines of El Segundo.
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Redick was the only other serious candidate at the time, and that I didn’t love. He had never coached anywhere beyond youth league, he had never won a championship as a sharpshooter, and he was currently best known as a TV analyst and the co-host of a podcast with LeBron James. He wasn’t qualified beyond being LeBron’s buddy, and hiring him would be a mistake that would set the franchise up for more wasted years.
Read more: Plaschke: I was wrong. Drafting Bronny James was a win for the Lakers
I was ready to welcome Hurley, writing, “No brainer. No question. No more looking. If the Lakers really think they can get him, they need to go get him.”
Then in the early days of June, Hurley stunningly turned them down, convinced by his wife, Andrea, to stay on the East Coast and pushed by his fighter’s instinct to attempt a UConn three-peat.
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A couple of weeks later, the Lakers hired Redick, and most of the basketball world shuddered.
“So now it’s painfully clear that JJ doesn’t stand for Just Joking,” I wrote at the time. “So now this is real. Real unusual. Real unsettling. Real unfortunate.”
Rob Pelinka, the Lakers general manager, saw it differently
“It was just really important to us as we made this hire to find a head coach that could sit across the table from some of the smartest and best players in the world,” Pelinka said at the time. “This is the stage for those players to be able to relate to, coach, hold them accountable, lead them, inspire them. And we felt like JJ was very unique…
