Redick has no teaching expertise
Redick was remarkably profitable as a podcaster and a broadcaster, shifting as much as ESPN’s high asserting staff at midseason whereas operating his personal manufacturing firm. His personal podcasts, “The Outdated Man and the Three” and “Thoughts The Sport,” which he co-hosts with James, are two of the preferred sports activities podcasts, the place Redick talks basketball technique and breaks down the sport.
However that is not the identical as teaching a staff, one thing Redick hasn’t achieved at any stage. Giving him the Lakers head job is like giving an actor a nine-figure price range to direct his first movie. The Lakers are guessing that he can do the job, but it surely’s all theoretical.
Take a look at Steve Nash’s unsuccessful tenure in Brooklyn as a first-time head coach or Derek Fisher with the New York Knicks.
There have been success tales, like Larry Hen’s three-year stint teaching the Indiana Pacers or Steve Kerr main the Golden State Warriors to a title. However each of them had years of expertise working in NBA entrance workplaces earlier than they took to the sidelines. Being an NBA head coach is a tricky job to study on the fly.
The Lakers’ roster is not nice
James is an all-time nice. Anthony Davis is a nine-time All-Star. But with their healthiest seasons in years (solely 17 missed video games mixed), the Lakers had been an eighth-place staff that received a single playoff sport.
Now Redick inherits a staff that completed with the NBA’s Fifteenth-best offense and Sixteenth-best protection, the definition of league common. James remains to be an All-NBA participant, however he turns 40 on Dec. 30.
It is not clear that former coaches Darvin Ham and Frank Vogel had been missing as strategists as a lot as they failed to fulfill unrealistic expectations that at all times exist for the Lakers, regardless of how proficient their roster is or is not.
Maybe Redick is a brand new voice that may attain the Lakers veterans higher than Ham. However Redick’s teaching cannot make James any youthful or the staff’s perimeter defenders extra athletic.
He is teaching LeBron James on the Lakers
James has been on the Lakers for six seasons. Redick shall be his fourth head coach in that point. There merely is not a protracted leash for anybody teaching the Lakers, nor for anybody teaching James, who has had eight totally different head coaches in his profession, with solely Mike Brown and Erik Spoelstra lasting greater than three seasons — and James tried to get Spoelstra fired 17 video games into hello first season in Miami.
In the meantime, the Lakers are on their eighth head coach since Phil Jackson left in 2011. What which means is James plus Lakers is a mix that results in quite a lot of impatience with a head coach, regardless of if he is studying on the job. Something wanting an NBA title is a disappointment, and even successful a title solely bought Frank Vogel two further years.
A primary-time NBA coach wants endurance, however that is not a part of the bundle with James or the Lakers, who’ve been in title-or-bust mode since 2019. When the Lakers made their provide to Dan Hurley, it was for six years and $70M. Redick is reportedly getting roughly $32M for 4 years. Redick’s deal would not carry as a lot job safety, because it’s less expensive to switch him.
