Culture
Inside the Lakers' decision to hire JJ Redick and how he shapes their future
Seven weeks after firing Darvin Ham, the Los Angeles Lakers landed on their next head coach on Thursday: JJ Redick, the 15-year NBA veteran turned podcaster and broadcaster, league sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell The Athletic. Redick is signing a four-year deal worth in the neighborhood of $8 million per season with the Lakers, according to sources briefed on the deal.
Behind the scenes, the Lakers had been zeroing in on the 39-year-old Redick for the past four weeks, infatuated with his potential to be a coach for the present and future, beyond just the next couple seasons of LeBron James’ legendary career.
Redick had first interviewed with vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka for the Lakers’ head coaching job for about two hours during the week of May 13 at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago. Redick then entered the Lakers facility on June 15 to meet again with Pelinka, as well as owners Jeanie, Joey and Jesse Buss, the remaining key stakeholders in the organization.
Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting described Redick as “impressive” during his visit to Los Angeles, diving deep into his offensive and defensive philosophies and displaying his passion for the sport that foreshadowed a willingness to submit himself to the countless working hours for the modern head coach.
He explained his decision-making process when it comes to strategy, how the analysis and empirical evidence would always guide his choices rather than preconceived notions or outdated beliefs. Redick described a system molded around this roster, focusing on elevating Anthony Davis’ involvement, particularly late in games, and alleviating the constant ballhandling duties on James by utilizing him more off the ball. Keeping James, who turns 40 in December, fresh down the stretch of the regular season and into the playoffs will be critical.
For these Lakers, Redick’s ability to access his stars in James and Davis could be seamless due to the stature he may bring as a respected former player, but how he unlocks the remainder of the roster and coaches top-down remains crucial to the job. Austin Reaves will surely be part of strong three-man attacks for the Lakers under Redick, who’ll be thrust into developing players such as Rui Hachimura, Max Christie and whomever the franchise drafts.
During his meetings with Pelinka and his visit with Lakers ownership, Redick showed promise, team sources said. But as with any first-time head coach, the true tests will come during the adversity of training camp and the season, the management of player relationships and the control of the locker room.
Redick has had a meteoric media rise since retiring from his playing career in 2021, running his podcast network, starting the “Mind the Game” show with James and serving as a color commentator during the NBA Finals all while simultaneously chasing a head coaching job. Redick interviewed for the Toronto Raptors’ top coaching job in 2023 and the Charlotte Hornets this year. He has never coached professionally — his only coaching experience to this point was with his son’s youth basketball team.
League sources briefed on Redick’s mindset say he badly wants to make the jump to NBA head coach and embrace the challenges the chair brings as he believes it is the natural transition of his basketball life.
As Redick watched these NBA playoffs, both as a commentator and viewer, he envisioned how he would utilize a potential James/Davis-led roster. Just a few years after ending his playing career, Redick has his next basketball challenge.
The Lakers underwent some turbulence in their coaching search.
Much of the process consisted of Pelinka meeting with candidates by himself off-site or virtually, not within Lakers headquarters. After his conversation with Redick, Pelinka met with Pelicans associate head coach James Borrego in Los Angeles on May 20. Several candidates — Boston’s Sam Cassell, Minnesota’s Micah Nori, Denver’s David Adelman and Miami’s Chris Quinn — conducted virtual meetings.
On May 29, Borrego became the first candidate to enter the Lakers’ facility to meet again with Pelinka and ownership.
In the days before and after Borrego’s second in-person visit, some Lakers stakeholders believed the focus of the head coaching search centered on Redick. Given the lack of a championship experience-driven hire after Mike Budenholzer went to the Suns and the Clippers kept Ty Lue long-term on a five-year contract extension, league sources briefed on the matter say Redick’s chances grew for the Lakers, a high-ceiling candidate tasked to balance winning and development and allowed to coach through early mistakes.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came Dan Hurley. On June 6, ESPN reported that the coach of the back-to-back national champion UConn Huskies was the “target” of the Lakers’ search. Beyond Jeanie Buss and Pelinka, the pursuit was kept tight-lipped within the organization.
Only Pelinka and Jeanie Buss met with Hurley when he and his wife, Andrea, came to the Lakers facility on June 7.
Hurley left Los Angeles after being offered a six-year, $70 million contract, according to league sources briefed on the matter. He returned home to Connecticut to mull his decision while the basketball world waited.
On June 10, he announced he was staying with the Huskies. Hurley’s new contract with UConn is expected to make him the highest-paid coach in college basketball — six years and upwards of $50 million, league sources said.
Even though the Lakers moved quickly to offer Hurley a contract that would have made him one of the highest-paid coaches in the league, several people inside the Lakers organization and externally wondered about the true overall genuineness of the pursuit and whether the franchise had been used by Hurley to get more money to stay at Connecticut. The Hurley situation was seen by one team source with direct involvement in the search as a Hail Mary attempt.
This much is clear, though: When it came to the Lakers’ ultimate decision-maker, Jeanie Buss, team sources said she was highly motivated to make Hurley their next coach and was genuinely disappointed when the attempt fell short.
Hurley himself told Dan Le Batard, as he made the media rounds, that the Lakers’ interest started on June 5. He denied needing the leverage to get a raise at UConn on “The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz” when asked about it, then later said the school’s name, image and likeness collective and his staffing payments still needed to be increased going into the Lakers’ process.
Just like that, Hurley was out of the picture almost as quickly as he’d entered it.
The Lakers’ brass regrouped on June 11, the day after Hurley’s announcement, and finally went all in on their top choice in Redick, according to team and league sources. After meeting with the Lakers on June 15, Redick spoke on the phone with Davis on Monday, a critical relationship in the years to come, the sources briefed on the situation said.
The decision to choose Redick came as the Lakers, led by Pelinka, prioritized Davis’ voice in the process and ensured that he understood the shared vision. Other key players were supportive of the hiring, those sources said.
Los Angeles is confident that Redick will be the long-term coaching solution that has eluded the franchise for over a decade.
Since Phil Jackson’s departure in the summer of 2011, the Lakers have now had seven different head coaches (eight if counting Bernie Bickerstaff’s five-game interim tenure in 2013). Winning hasn’t always equated to job security in Los Angeles: Frank Vogel won a championship in 2020 and was fired two years later. Ham made the Western Conference finals in 2023 and was gone one season later.
But the 39-year-old Redick checks many of the boxes on the Lakers’ extensive checklist for their next coach. He’s drawn internal comparisons to a young Pat Riley as a coaching prospect who jumped from playing to the broadcast booth to the coaching chair (though Riley spent two years as a Lakers assistant before taking the top job). Los Angeles is confident he can be its version of Erik Spoelstra or Steve Kerr — a culture-setter who can grow with the franchise for over a decade. There have been far more former-player, first-time head coaches who failed to meet expectations than those who succeeded, though, with the most recent examples including Steve Nash (Brooklyn), Derek Fisher (Knicks), Jason Kidd (Brooklyn) and Ham.
Multiple sources briefed on the matter said one person who became a respected unofficial resource for the Lakers during the process is legendary former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, whose deep knowledge of candidates, such as Redick and others, provides a lens into the culture the organization wants and the characteristics of a potential staff around the next head coach. Krzyzewski’s history with the Lakers goes back to 2004 when Dr. Jerry Buss made a strong yet unsuccessful offer to hire Coach K. Redick played for Krzyzewski at Duke from 2002 to 2006.
Assistant coaching candidates for Redick’s staff will include former head coach and recent Trail Blazers assistant Scott Brooks, former Lakers guard Rajon Rondo, ex-Laker and current Dallas Mavericks assistant Jared Dudley and Cassell, according to league sources.
The timing of Redick’s hire is notable, as he will join Los Angeles’ roster-planning ahead of the NBA Draft on June 26-27 — the first day the Lakers can trade their three tradeable picks (2024, ’29 and ’31). It also puts a leader in place ahead of James’ looming free agency. The 39-year-old superstar must decide whether to exercise his $51.4 million player option for the 2024-25 season by June 29. The Lakers are open to any contract structure that will keep James in Los Angeles, league sources told The Athletic.
James’ decision, and how the Lakers reshape their roster around him and Davis, will determine Los Angeles’ direction next season. But Redick’s arrival is a significant bet on an unproven coach — one the team is confident can bridge the gap into the next era of Lakers basketball.
(Top photo: Tyler Ross / NBAE via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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