Monday night’s contest between the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs saw head coach JJ Redick face off with a former teammate in point guard Chris Paul. Redick and Paul were teammates with the Los Angeles Clippers for four seasons and the two maintain a close relationship to this day.
Redick is only one year older than Paul, so it could stand to reason that watching the point guard still play might spark a fire within Redick about returning to the court. But the Lakers coach quickly shot that down
“No, I just told him you’re a psycho for still playing (Laughs),” Redick said prior to the Lakers’ 16-point win.
It is funny to hear Redick call Paul a ‘psycho’ for still playing in his 20th NBA season, meanwhile LeBron James continues to dominate in Year 22 for Redick’s Lakers. Either way, the end of Paul’s career is nearing and what he will do next is unclear, though Redick did reveal that he has had discussions with him about potentially coaching.
“Oh yeah, we’ve talked about it the last three years,” Redick added. “We had a long conversation about media stuff at one point during the coaching process this last spring, we had an hour-and-a-half conversation one night. It’s interesting because the fear for all of us, especially as we get towards the end, is that there’s nothing on the other side. And it’s not about how much money you made in your career and how much you saved and what you can live off of, it’s not about that.
“Highly competitive, highly driven, highly motivated people, there’s a fear. And that is CP. The crazy thing is he could do anything he wanted to do because of who he is and how he’s carried himself and the career he’s had and the reputation he has and the person he is. And he still wants to play the game. That says a lot about him. And he’s a great dad and great husband and he’s still chasing the little orange ball around like we all did when we were kids. To me, that’s like, love that.”
Paul undoubtedly has the intelligence, mindset and drive to be successful in whatever avenue he chooses once he decides to hang it up. But in the meantime, the Spurs guard is still enjoying watching his former teammate succeed and playing against him.
“Yeah, it’s cool, man,” Paul said. “Especially because I’ll still watch games every night, so talking to JJ [Redick] before the game, watching the strategy that goes into the game, knowing he was my teammate and now seeing him coaching and doing things outside of the box. You gotta do that if you’re gonna have a chance, but JJ is doing a great job over there, and [it’s] still surreal to be playing against him.”
If Paul does ultimately eye coaching, perhaps he could get his start with Redick as an assistant and finally become a member of the Lakers more than a decade after he thought he was joining the franchise as a player.
JJ Redick told Lakers to stop complaining about the schedule
The Lakers’ contest against the Spurs was the second game in the second set of three straight back-to-backs for JJ Redick’s team. But Redick doesn’t want to hear his team complaining about it anymore and revealed that he told them as much a couple of weeks ago as no one will feel sorry about the Lakers.
“It just feels like this time of year, we’re packing in a ton of games,” Redick said. “The NFL is over and so for a team like us, they’re fitting us in all of the national TV slots now, which creates a back-to-back in Milwaukee-Denver.
“Back-to-backs, it’s just part of the NBA. Every team goes through it at different points. So no one is gonna feel sorry for us and we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. You gotta play the game in front of you and then move on to the next thing and try to get better. I think as we start getting everybody back, they will be a lot of tough parts of the schedule still to go, but we knew this two weeks, last week starting with the Boston game through this homestand, was gonna be a huge challenge.”
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