Los Angeles Lakers president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka rattled off his team’s offseason accomplishments Thursday at a Lakers media availability.
He mentioned the Lakers signing center Deandre Ayton, bringing aboard wings Jake LaRavia and Marcus Smart and, of course, inking Luka Dončić to a three-year, $165 million max extension. Pelinka also noted four-time NBA champion and four-time league MVP LeBron James picking up his $52.6 million player option.
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But then, in that same opening statement, Pelinka subtly dropped some news:
“And in addition to that, too, recently extending JJ’s [Redick] contract just to make it clear that he’s the basketball leader, in terms of our coaching and on-court performance.”
The Lakers hired Redick last year, signing him to a four-year deal at the time despite his lack of NBA coaching experience and limited coaching experience overall.
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Now they’ve extended the 41-year-old player-turned-coach ahead of the 2025-26 season.
Redick led the Lakers to a 50-32 record and the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference last season before Los Angeles bowed out to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs.
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“Rob and I, we have a lot of the same philosophies on life, and one of the words we always talk about is ‘gratitude,'” Redick said Thursday, when asked about receiving the extension.
“And so I think it starts with just a high level of gratitude to the Lakers, to [Lakers majority owner] Mark [Walter], Jeanie [Buss] and Rob for having that confidence in me. It’s not lost on me, the sort of rarity of a first-time head coach getting an extension. I recognize how fortunate I am to be with an organization that supports me that way.”
The Lakers are showing a lot of confidence in second-year head coach JJ Redick. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
(MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Pelinka was asked why he extended Redick now, after just the first year of Redick’s four-year contract.
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“Confidence and belief,” Pelinka said.
“We think he’s a special coach with a special voice that’s really helping us to continue to define the culture of Lakers excellence, and we just wanted to make a clear statement that this is what we believe in, what we’re going to lean into and what our players are going to mold into as we continue to develop the identity. I think having long-term planning is helpful as we build this team and go forward.”
Redick had the luxury of a full offseason this time around. Last year, he got the Lakers head-coaching job in late June. Pivoting from a media career in which he served as an ESPN analyst and notably co-hosted the “Mind the Game” podcast with James, Redick had to quickly stitch together a coaching staff and gear up for an 82-game season that he last experienced in 2020-21 as a reserve guard first for the New Orleans Pelicans and then for the Dallas Mavericks.
After that six-month sprint — which included the Lakers trading for Dončić and then Redick having to figure out how to maximize the talents of ball-dominant superstars in Dončić and James, plus where burgeoning guard Austin Reaves fit into the equation — Redick finally had a chance to come up for air.
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“I thought about a lot of things,” Redick explained. “You certainly reflect on the previous season, both successes and failures, and you do a lot of self-assessment, and that was really where I spent a lot of the first probably four to six weeks.
“But I would say the two words that pop into my mind are philosophy and methodology: the philosophy of how we want to play, the methodology as a coach of how I want to teach that. And so that’s where I spent a lot of time this summer.”
Redick explained Thursday that, in May, a few weeks after his Lakers lost to the Timberwolves in five games, he met up with Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay.
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Redick said he knows McVay through former Rams and Cincinnati Bengals offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth. Redick tried to meet up with McVay before last season, but he couldn’t find the time in the chaos of his massive career, and life, transition.
This offseason, Redick had the time.
“I got about three hours along with Sean, and we were picking each other’s brains,” Redick said. “It was very helpful. One of the takeaways from that was ‘utility plays.'”
Redick brought up the anecdote when he was asked about his progression in piecing together the best offense for Dončić, James and Reaves.
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“That’s something that is a football term,” Redick said of the “utility plays” McVay spoke of, “and I think every basketball team has those utility plays, and so the utility plays are plays where all three of those guys feel involved in some capacity, and they’re sharing the court together.”
In addition to spending some time with seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady this summer, and asking him about how Bill Belichick coached the dynastic New England Patriots, Redick said he met with a lot of NBA coaches earlier this month when he was in Chicago.
“So, again, it’s really just about continued growth for myself, for my staff, and I feel like we all are in a good place to serve this basketball team and our players,” Redick said.
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