Warriors beat writer Danny Emerman shares his thoughts on the NBA offseason and beyond.
Two lists came to mind after the Lakers hired JJ Redick as their next head coach.
List 1: Steve Nash, Derek Fisher, Steve Kerr, Jason Kidd, Mark Jackson, Vinny Del Negro, Isiah Thomas and Doc Rivers.
List 2: Paul Silas, Brendan Malone, Mike Brown, David Blatt, Luke Walton, Frank Vogel and Darvin Ham.
Neither looks good for Redick, the former Duke star and NBA veteran turned media personality.
The first is a collection of former NBA players turned head coaches without any prior coaching experience in the past 25 years. Doc Rivers has had a decades-long career, but Kerr — and his four championship rings — is the clear standout in a group of mostly flameouts or short stints.
The second group is every coach who has been fired while coaching LeBron James. The only head coaches James has had in his career who haven’t been canned are Tyronn Lue and Erik Spoelstra, whom he tried to nudge out in 2010.
Being a first-time head coach in the NBA is very hard. Coaching James as a first-time coach sounds downright fatal.
Redick might have more success navigating things with his “Mind The Gap” podcast co-host than other former James coaches. But that won’t mean it’ll be easy when the Lakers go through a losing streak, when James decides to send cryptic messages on social media, when James soaks up credit but not blame, when the team looks to James — not Redick — in the huddle.
When Kerr took over the Warriors in 2014, he inherited a championship-ready roster and took them over the top. He’d gained experience as a general manager and in ownership with the Suns and had won five titles playing for Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich.
Redick, meanwhile, had a very long and successful career but didn’t have nearly the exposure to coaching greatness Kerr did. After retiring, he didn’t learn the perspective of a front office executive-coach relationship, instead planting the seeds of a possible basketball media empire. He’ll inherit a Lakers team — centered around a 39-year-old James and an oft-injured Anthony Davis — that’s been the seventh seed in the West each of the past two seasons.
Redick knows the ins and outs of the game as well as anyone. He should be able to relate to the players in the locker room seamlessly. He clearly has a passion for coaching and very well might turn into the next great one.
But if he does, it’ll be in the face of the history of untried former players and James’ track record of coaching instability.
A Bay Area championship drought?
The craziest stat to come out of the Celtics’ 2024 NBA championship win was that it broke a city-wide “drought” of five years — the second-longest in Boston sports history since each four major professional sports teams existed.
Five years. That’s all.
Between the Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, and Bruins, Boston has held an astounding 13 championship parades this century. …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
