ESPN Analysts Are Not Helping JJ Redick’s Chances of Coaching Lakers

What's going on with ESPN and JJ Redick?

Jun 9, 2024; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; ESPN analyst JJ Redick looks on before game two of the 2024 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports / Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Lakers parted ways with Darvin Ham nearly seven weeks ago and they still haven't hired his replacment. It's one of the weirder coaching searches in recent memory as JJ Redick has seemed like the favorite to land the job since the day before Ham was let go.

For most of the last two months it has seemed like a formality that Redick and the Lakers were waiting for the NBA Finals to end before they would make it official, but the Boston Celtics' championship has come and gone and we're still waiting.

The weirdest part about this is that the longer it drags out, the more opportunities ESPN has to undermine Redick's chances of getting the job. At least that's how it feels right now. ESPN has kind of treated Redick like he's not one of their most high-profile personalities over the last few weeks. He's not ESPN's JJ Redick, the guy who was calling the NBA Finals alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke. He's the abstract idea of JJ Redick, a podcaster and retired NBA player.

At any point over the last couple months one of ESPN's many writers could have simply asked Redick what was going on, but instead they treated him like he wasn't there on their airwaves every few nights, while they waited for him to bail like Doc Rivers did in 2004 or again earlier this year. It's almost like they were thinking about him like Schrödinger's podcaster. As long as they don't ask him what he's doing, he's not leaving.

In the meantime the network is doing whatever it can to keep him from leaving. Or at least that's how it seems. Led by Stephen A. Smith, there seems to be a push from within ESPN to torpedo Redick's chances at getting the Lakers job. On First Take last week Smith reported that Black coaches from around the league had reached out to say that they didn't like Redick's podcast with LeBron James because it hurt Darvin Ham.

"Numerous coaches, Black coaches called me expressing how they took issue with that podcast taking place." - Stephen A. Smith on the timing of LeBron James-JJ Redick podcast. pic.twitter.com/XrLHO44mYn

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 17, 2024

Redick and James launched the podcast near the end of the NBA's regular season, with Brian Windhorst saying earlier this month that they basically served as interviews for the Lakers as the two broke down basketball to its finest details.

Get Up discussed whether Redick had undermined Ham on Monday morning, ahead of Redick calling Game 5 on ESPN on ABC. Mike Greenberg used more comments from Smith as the jumping-off point for the conversation before Jay Williams defended the timing of the podcast.

"This wasn't just put in place to undermine Darvin Ham," Williams said. "LeBron James, when you talk basketball to him, it sounds very different when you have those barbershop conversations. And there's a reason why the podcast is doing well. There's also a reason why RedBird Capital deployed a lot of money into SpringHill and now they're trying to deploy it into JJ Redick's platform."

Williams, who seemed to tip off an impending Redick-Lakers announcement on Tuesday morning, is obviously well-versed in this topic, even if it does feel like an incredibly casual explanation for the motivations of an investment capital firm for a sports morning show.

Anyway, improprieties aren't the only reason ESPN has presented as a case for Redick to not get hired away by the Lakers this week. As soon as Monty Williams was fired by the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday, Smith was putting his name out there as a potential candidate for the Lakers job.

.@stephenasmith thinks Monty Williams should "definitely" be a candidate for the Lakers' HC position. pic.twitter.com/Y06tCiBZlv

— First Take (@FirstTake) June 19, 2024

Then on Thursday morning, Udonis Haslem, the vice president of basketball development for the Miami Heat, said "Hell yes" the Lakers should hire Monty Williams as their next head coach.

.@ThisIsUD believes the Lakers should hire Monty Williams as their next HC 👀 pic.twitter.com/9YJ1FdZfky

— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) June 20, 2024

"You have to do your due diligence," Haslem explained. "This is your job to bring in the best coach and the best fit for your team. We question, can JJ control the locker room? We understand he has a great basketball mind. We understand he has a great future. Can he control the locker room? A divided locker room is a doomed locker room. We understand Monty Williams has the respect of the guys around the NBA."

Haslem also pointed out that Williams might not want to coach since he's due such a large amount of money from the Pistons to not coach. Still, when was the last time a coach led a team to the worst record in any league and upon termination it was immediately assumed he would be a great fit for the most high-profile job available? Is it not incredibly weird to think of someone fired by two teams in 13 months as the top candidate on the market?

Combine these segments with the fact that the Lakers randomly tried to hire Dan Hurley a week ago and the fact that the Lakers have gone nearly two full months without a coach and it's hard to tell what the heck is going on.

Do the Lakers know? Does ESPN? The longer we go with nothing happening, it's hard to tell if anyone really does. If Redick does, he's not telling. In fact, it seems likely he's saving it for a podcast, which seems more like the move of a podcaster than a basketball coach.