The web helped make JJ Redick the following Lakers coach. Now he is unplugging

The place the place JJ Redick desires to be, the basketball courtroom, affords construction. The traces that mark the perimeter of the courtroom differentiate between in bounds and out of bounds. The principles of the sport make it possible for craft is rewarded.

That place, the courtroom, made Redick a star — the all-time main scorer in Duke basketball historical past. It made him wealthy — practically $118 million in wage earned from the Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks, Clippers, Philadelphia 76ers, New Orleans Pelicans and Dallas Mavericks.

However that place didn’t lead Redick to the bench with the Lakers, no less than not solely. The precise highway that led Redick to the Lakers has been lined with coaxial cables, modems and Wi-Fi indicators, and is painfully and, at occasions, superbly structureless.

When the Lakers employed Redick because the twenty ninth head coach in workforce historical past this spring, they acquired greater than a former faculty star, greater than a lottery decide who needed to carve out a task as one of many league’s high shooters earlier than turning into a valued veteran chief. They signed up for a partnership with a pioneer of basketball’s alternate realities of the web.

However now, JJ Redick is able to unplug.

“You’ll not see me tweet or publish something on IG,” Redick informed The Occasions.

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He’ll not host any of the podcasts together with his ThreeFourTwo Productions. He is not going to proceed his basketball-strategy present, “Thoughts the Sport,” with LeBron James. He is not going to work together together with his 328,700-some-odd followers on X or publish content material for his 366,000 followers on Instagram.

He hasn’t posted on both since June.

“I believe there are various advantages for social media and Twitter. The bandwidth that I’ve the place I’ve to be … it’s important to perceive this too, and I’ve talked with quite a lot of my shut pals who’re head coaches, my bandwidth when you’ve got the children, there needs to be an intentionality about your time while you’re at house. And my time on the workplace,” Redick mentioned two weeks earlier than his first coaching camp as a head coach. “We talked as a employees this weekend about effectivity. The whole lot I do needs to be environment friendly. Spending time on Twitter is just not an environment friendly use of my time as a head coach.”

To be clear, Redick isn’t going completely underground. He’s stop social media earlier than and located the expertise to be releasing, returning to the house solely as he transitioned from NBA participant to skilled broadcaster and commentator.

“It is a darkish place,” Redick mentioned of social media to Bleacher Report in 2018. “It is not a wholesome place. It is not actual. It is not a wholesome place for ego … if we’re speaking about some Freudian s—. It is simply this cycle of anger and validation and tribalism. It is scary, man.”

Now, forward of his first yr because the Lakers coach, which formally opens Monday with the workforce’s media day, Redick is steadfast in once more leaving that darkish place — no less than as a participant.

“I took a two-year break and it was nice,” he mentioned. “However it’s important to perceive, for me and what I used to be doing with the podcast and with ESPN, I needed to have a social media account and I needed to comply with … I am a weeds particular person. I wished to know the entire discourse. If I will be commentating on the discourse on ‘First Take’ or if I will be commentating on the discourse on my podcast, I need to know what the discourse was.”

To be clear, there was extra to it than that. Redick would make clear and defend positions, generally to former NBA gamers like Eddie Johnson, who like Redick, was working in media. And generally, he’d get right into a back-and-forth dialogue with unknown figures like @TheDressedLlama.

“A few of it may be enjoyable if it is a bit,” he acknowledged.

Redick can brush off his upcoming social media absence, however there’s no denying the function his presence on-line performed in his post-playing days, the one which’s now acquired him teaching James and the Lakers.

In 2016, he turned the primary NBA participant to host a weekly podcast in season when he agreed to hitch Yahoo Sports activities and Adrian Wojnarowski’s “The Vertical.” A yr later, he went to Invoice Simmons’ web site, The Ringer, the place he launched a podcast that booked visitors from Joel Embiid to James Corden to Kyrie Irving to Thierry Henry within the first batch of reveals.

He left to start out his personal manufacturing firm and a brand new podcast, “The Outdated Man and the Three” (a Hemingway pun), in 2020 and amassed greater than 1 million subscribers.

Jason Gallagher, a producer who labored with Redick at The Ringer and left for a task at “The Outdated Man and the Three,” mentioned he noticed first-hand that any preconceived notions he may need had about Redick — the sorta Nineteen Eighties film dangerous man persona he carved out for himself as a star at Duke — had been shortly erased.

“He is been in a number of sports activities followers lives like for, for years and years and years. And so you’ve got a preconceived notion of him … like, there is no manner me and this man are going to ever vibe like, what I imply? … And, I used to be simply in a short time shocked by how open and type and regular he can form of be.”

Redick impressed Gallagher with how a lot he trusted the producer when it got here to concepts for the present and with how a lot work he put in to creating positive all of the granular particulars had been pretty much as good as they could possibly be.

“I am not kidding. He would name me random-ass nights after I’m laying in mattress with my spouse watching ‘Shark Tank,’ and he is identical to calling me to speak to me about like Memphis’ no matter, like what they’re doing on offense, and I am like, ‘Know your viewers, bro.’”

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The obsession and the humanity got here by in his work, when Redick in some way walked a line the place he was supremely assured in his opinions and experiences whereas additionally being wildly curious sufficient to work together with pretty nameless “footwork gurus” who run social media accounts dissecting what’s and isn’t a journey.

“It’s his dedication to basketball,” Gallagher mentioned. “It is actually an interesting factor to me. It actually genuinely is. And that is why I believe he’s gonna be nice. Like he does not simply love the sport He does not simply love like the entire stuff that comes with being the Lakers coach, this type of fame, the notoriety, no matter. Like I truly imagine he has a kinship to the game of basketball that’s so pure. That is why I’ve a lot religion in him on this new endeavor.”

When the Lakers launched Redick as their coach this summer season, the workforce didn’t particularly say something about how he received them over together with his tweets or YouTube movies. However the noise he made within the house actually made him a novel candidate, providing examples of his philosophies in lieu of any precise on-court work the workforce may choose.

“Once we set out on the journey to call the following Lakers coach, we actually had in thoughts ideas round innovation and difficult ourselves to be ahead considering,” normal supervisor Rob Pelinka mentioned. “I believe in business on the whole and in sports activities in particular, generally it is easy to get caught up in patterns of being in a sea of identical, a sea of sameness and doing the identical factor that everyone else is doing. However after we launched into this search, it was actually vital for us to see if we may do one thing slightly bit completely different.”

And somebody who podcasted and posted his manner right into a job, Redick’s path has actually slightly bit completely different.

As he stands on the sides of the primary days of his new profession, one he’s hellbent on conquering, he’s transferring with as away from a thoughts as attainable. He works with a number of psychological coaches, together with a efficiency coach and a mindset coach.

This summer season, when he instantly discovered himself thrust again to the foreground of stories cycles for the primary time since he was the brash scoring sensation within the ACC, Redick felt uneasy with a second that was “Truman Present-y,” he mentioned.

“This spring, publish bump to the (ESPN ‘A’ broadcast) workforce, publish LeBron podcast launching, publish teaching rumors and a few issues that by no means acquired reported on — there was one other substantial alternative in a unique group that wasn’t teaching associated — when all of that was occurring, we talked by all of the completely different pulls on my life.”

And there was simply no manner that social media was going to be certainly one of them.

“You consider this job and what’s required on this job, and one of many issues that is required is self-motivation, in addition to the power to encourage different individuals. One other factor that is required is having a transparent head,” he mentioned. “So for me, I do not want exterior motivation. I let go of that sooner or later at Duke. I simply let go of that side of it and the emotional highs and lows of that. It is good. You eliminate that.

“The clear-minded factor is tremendous vital as a result of it is finally the individuals within the coaches’ room with me as we self-audit and mission and look ahead and look behind, no matter we’re doing with that particular day’s process, it has to return from inside that room. And we have now to be clear-minded versus, ‘Hey guys, Joe Smith47198 mentioned we’re doing a foul job calling timeouts.’ I believe if we’re doing a foul job of calling timeouts, we have in all probability already introduced that up ourselves.”

Then Redick paused and began to chortle, virtually as if he may think about the pinging of his telephone after his sideline habits acquired dissected.

“There are going to be memes and GIFs [of me] for positive,” he mentioned. “It is inevitable.”

He simply received’t be the one posting them.

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This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Times.