As JJ Redick prepared to coach the Lakers against the Celtics on Sunday, Pat Riley was being honored outside of Crypto.com Arena with the team’s first statue of a coach.
The franchise’s past and present had collided, with the 41-year-old hot shot hoping to one day mirror the accomplishments of the 80-year-old legend.
Ever since Redick was hired to take over the Lakers’ helm in June 2024, he has drawn comparisons to Riley.
They’re both former players. After they retired, they both became broadcasters. Riley hardly had any coaching experience (two years as a Lakers assistant from 1979-81) before being handed one of the most prestigious jobs in the league in 1981. Redick had no coaching experience. They both have strikingly slick personas.
And they both were tasked with leading the team through major transitions. Riley helped the Lakers pass the baton from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Magic Johnson, while Redick is overseeing the Lakers’ passing of the guard from LeBron James to Luka Doncic.
When Redick was hired, he knew the franchise was hoping he’d 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, sort of set the standard for modern NBA coaches,” Redick said.
For Riley, the respect is reciprocated.
“He’s a fiery guy,” Riley said of Redick. “He could shoot the hell out of the ball. He was tough as nails, you know. I don’t know. Sometimes I look back and I remember myself at that time and I looked at JJ and I think they picked the right person. There’s just a quality about him I think that goes above and beyond.”
Redick is still evolving into who he is as a coach. He’s still finding his style. His voice. But this much is for sure: He’s an incredibly hard worker. His basketball IQ is respected by everyone in the locker room. After games, Redick locks himself in a dark basement and pores over film. He’s a basketball sicko.
He undoubtedly can be described as intense, a quality for which Riley was infamous.
Magic Johnson gave a handful of reporters a glimpse into how Riley ran his teams after the 8-foot, 510-pound statue of his former coach was unveiled in a star-studded ceremony Sunday.
“He didn’t let us take a day off or a play off or a moment off,” Johnson said.
Johnson praised Riley for his masterful in-game adjustments, calling him “a visionary.” He also pointed out how much courage it took for Riley to make Johnson the team’s No. 1 offensive option while he was still sharing a uniform with Abdul-Jabbar, who turned 35 in Riley’s first season as Lakers head coach.
“Hold on, wait a minute, huh?” Johnson recalled his reaction being at the time. “A dude who was the greatest player at that time that ever played the game and you’re going to go to him and say somebody else is going to take the bulk of the offense now?”
Johnson called Riley fearless and extremely tough.
He’d make the Lakers run for 40 minutes straight at practices. He’d make them do three-man weaves without letting the ball touch the ground. Over the summer, he’d send each player a letter telling them how much he wanted them to weigh. Then he’d weigh them publicly when they reported to training camp.
Riley especially knew how to get under Johnson’s skin. He’d show him highlights of Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and say, “What are you gonna do?”
“Soon as he did that, the button was going to go off on me and I’m going to have a triple-double,” Johnson said. “That’s all he had to do, just put those two dudes up there and he knew I was going to go to another level.”
Riley led the Lakers to four championships from 1982-1988, and he ushered in the Showtime era. Under him, Johnson became a three-time MVP. Johnson called him “one of the greatest coaches who ever lived,” as well as “the coolest man that’s ever put on an Armani suit.”
Redick, meanwhile, is just in his second season as coach of the Lakers.
He’s still getting his feet 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 they were eliminated by the Timberwolves in the first round.
Afterward, Redick was far from patting himself on the back.
“I know I can be better,” he said. “And I know I will get better. I don’t necessarily take any satisfaction from how the year went. That’s not to say I’m not proud of what the group was able to do and how we were able to figure out things on the fly and put ourselves in a position to have homecourt in the first round. But there’s always ways to get better. And I can get a lot better.”
This season, Redick has led the Lakers to fifth place in the West despite James, Doncic and Reaves only playing 12 games together because of injuries.
Redick is still becoming Redick.
But his potential is unquestionably through the roof. His analysis of the game is incredibly sharp. When he was still hosting the “Mind the Game” podcast with James before he was hired by the Lakers, he’d dissect players and their moves with surgeon-like precision.
Players respond to him. They respect him.
And he has navigated the tricky line of helping the 26-year-old Doncic become the face of the team while the 41-year-old James is still the face of the league and one of the greatest players of all time.
Whether Redick can become a Riley-esque figure is still unknown.
Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison, one that would set up any fledgling coach for disappointment.
But for now, Redick is going to have a reminder of who he aspires to be every time he shows up for work. It stands tall in between bronzed figures of Johnson and Abdul-Jabbar. It has slicked-back hair, a tailored designer suit and is an example of greatness.
“It’s a good-looking statue,” Redick said.
