Add former Houston Rockets superstar guard Steve Francis to the long list of NBA personalities who oppose the hiring of JJ Redick as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers named Redick the 29th coach in franchise history in June, replacing Darvin Ham, who was relieved of the Purple and Gold's head coaching duties after their first-round exit in the 2024 playoffs.
According to 'The Franchise,' several highly qualified coaching candidates were bypassed because the Lakers went for the candidate who was the " it thing."
"I love basketball, but there's no way that just because he went to Duke, and he criticizes people on television like he sounds like a great coach," said Francis. "But I look at it like all these other guys who put a lot of significant work in, you have my boy David Vanterpool here in Washington, you have Sam Cassell, you have so many guys who have championship experience. All these guys who have experience and get looked over just because it's the 'it' thing right now with generation cuz these guys are doing these podcasts."
JJ was the popular choice
Redick hosted The Old Man and the Three podcast, which, with over one million subscribers, is one of the most popular NBA-related shows on the internet. In March, JJ also launched a new podcast with LeBron James, the Mind the Game pod, which built a following of over 600K subscribers prior to its pause after the former Blue Devil was hired as the Lakers' head coach.
Meanwhile, some guys like Cassell, Vanterpool, and even Mark Jackson are more than qualified to coach at the NBA level but were not even considered. For comparison's sake, Redick has no previous coaching experience at any level.
"The thing that's going to happen is just like Darvin Ham was the coach. LeBron is not going to listen to not one word JJ is saying," added Francis. "Why would you listen to him? I wouldn't listen to him if he was coaching me. I'll just look at how much I bake him and be like, 'What are you saying? You know what I do, so talk to somebody else'. So it's definitely going to be hard for him to get through and the camaraderie with the circus around him and his son, it's going to be a lot of distraction for a rookie coach and we'll see what happens."
Related: Mark Cuban is open to co-owning a team with Shaquille O'Neal and LeBron James: "I have to make it okay with my current partners"
Lou says coaching is a different animal
Similarly, another former NBA star, three-time Sixth Man of the Year winner Lou Williams , also said that he doesn't think Redick can command an NBA locker room . According to Lou Will, JJ is an excellent podcaster and has a great analytic basketball mind, but podcasting and NBA coaching are two different occupations.
"There is no chance that JJ Redick is going to be able to command that locker room. Yeah, him and LeBron can sit there, drink wine together, and break down plays, but it's a little different when you got 20,000 people screaming at you, and you have 11 other players that you have to manage as well," said Williams.
Well, the Lakers have already played three preseason games, and they are 1-2 after Thursday's win over the Milwaukee Bucks. So far, everything looks fine in Tinseltown. But as they say, this is only the honeymoon stage. We'll see what happens when the games start to matter.
Related: Shaq breaks down what JJ Redick needs to do to gain the Lakers players' respect: "You can't yell at everybody"
Local News
