As JJ Redick prepares to coach the Lakers against the Celtics on Sunday, Pat Riley was honored outside Crypto.com Arena with the coach’s first team photo.
The franchise’s past and present collided, and the 41-year-old hot gun hopes to one day emulate the accomplishments of the 80-year-old legend.
Ever since Redick was hired to take over the Lakers in June 2024, he has drawn comparisons to Riley.
Both are veteran players. After retirement, both became broadcasters. Riley had no coaching experience (two years as a Lakers assistant from 1979-81) before he was offered one of the most prestigious jobs in the league in 1981. Redick had no coaching experience. Both have incredibly intelligent personalities.
And both had the task of leading the team through a major change. Riley helped the Lakers pass the baton from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Magic Johnson, while Redick directed the Lakers’ pass from guard LeBron James to Luka Doncic.
When Redick was hired, he knew the franchise was hoping he would fill the Armani shoes of the legendary coach. The question on everyone’s mind was obvious: Could he be the next Pat Riley?
“Pat, to me, sets the standard for modern NBA coaches,” Redick said.
For Riley, respect is returned.
“He’s an aggressive guy,” Riley said of Redick. “He could shoot the hell out of the ball. He was tough as nails, you know.
Redick is still evolving into who he is as a coach. He’s still finding his style. His voice. But this much is certain: He works incredibly hard. His basketball IQ is respected by everyone in the locker room. After games, Redick locks himself in a dark basement and films holes. He is a basketball player.
He could definitely be described as strong, a quality that Riley was famous for.
Magic Johnson gave a handful of reporters a glimpse of how Riley ran his teams after the 8-foot, 510-pound statue of his former coach was unveiled at a star-studded event Sunday.
“He didn’t let us take a day off or play sports or take a break,” Johnson said.
Johnson praised Riley for his positive change in the game, calling him “a visionary.” He also pointed out how much courage it took for Riley to make Johnson the team’s No. 1 when he shared a uniform with Abdul-Jabbar, who turned 35 in Riley’s first season as the Lakers’ head coach.
“Wait a minute, huh?” Johnson recalled his reaction at the time. “The guy who was the greatest player at the time to ever play the game and you’re going to go to him and say somebody else is going to take a lot of the blame now?”
Johnson called Riley fearless and tough as nails.
He would make the Lakers run 40 minutes straight in practice. He had them do three man weaves without letting the ball touch the ground. During the summer, he sent each player a letter telling them how much he wanted them to measure up. After that, he publicly weighed them when they arrived at the training camp.
Riley especially knew how to get under Johnson’s skin. He would show him clips of Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and say, “What are you going to do?”
“As soon as he did that, the button would go off and I would have a triple-double,” Johnson said. “That’s all he had to do, put those two guys up and he knew I was going to go to the next level.”
Riley led the Lakers to four championships from 1982-1988, and ushered in the Showtime era. Under him, Johnson became a three-time MVP. Johnson called him “one of the greatest trainers who ever lived,” and “the coolest man to ever wear an Armani suit.”
Meanwhile, Redick is in his second season as the Lakers’ coach.
His feet are still wet. Last season, he vowed to evaluate himself by growth instead of metrics. He led the Lakers to third place in the Western Conference at 50-32 before being eliminated by the Timberwolves in the first round.
After that, Redick was far from patting himself on the back.
“I know I can be better,” she said. “And I know I’m going to get better. I don’t really take satisfaction in how the year went. That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of what the team was able to do and how we were able to find things out of the blue and put ourselves in a position to have a home field in the first round. But there’s always ways to get better. And I can be a lot better.”
This season, Redick led the Lakers to fifth place in the West despite James, Doncic and Reaves playing 12 games together due to injuries.
Redick is still Redick.
But his ability is undoubtedly through the roof. His analysis of the game is incredibly sharp. When he hosted the “Mind the Game” podcast with James before he was hired by the Lakers, he dissected players and their movements with surgeon-like precision.
The players answered him. They respect him.
And he’s navigated the tricky line of helping 26-year-old Doncic become the face of the team while 41-year-old James is the face of the league and one of its greatest players. Whether he can be Riley-esque is still unknown.
Perhaps an unfair comparison, which would set any budding coach at risk of embarrassment.
But for now, Redick will have a reminder of who he wants to be every time he comes to work. It stands tall among the bronze figures of Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar. He has slicked back hair, a tailored designer suit and is the epitome of greatness.
“It’s a pretty good picture,” Redick said.
