Will new Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick continue to host a podcast with LeBron James?
There are many questions that remain unanswered when it comes to the Lakers’ new head coach, but one of them isn’t whether he will continue podcasting.
As the dust continues to settle on the franchise’s surprising decision to hire JJ Redick, the man himself has shed some light on what he intends to do and what he doesn’t. With that, his highly touted run on the podcast that he co-hosts with his new team’s star is set to come to an end.
JJ Redick won’t host podcasts anymore
While JJ Redick did establish himself as a reliable shooter during a 15-year NBA career, it would be fair to say that he wasn’t exactly a household name. That changed of course when he became a podcaster. Indeed, between his The Old Man and the Three show on which he has interviewed a multitude of NBA stars, to his co-hosting duties alongside Lakers icon, LeBron James, on Mind the Game, Reddick is now a veritable star of the game.
With that in mind, there have understandably been questions about how and if he will continue to host podcasts now that he’s been hired and subsequently unveiled albeit controversially as the Los Angeles Lakers’ new head coach. Speaking during his introductory press conference on Monday, the 40-year-old cleared the air with a direct answer explaining that the two roles can’t coexist. “I am, for the time being, and hopefully it’s a very, very long time, I am excommunicated from the content space,” Redick said. “There will be no podcast,” he stated frankly. “I am done with podcasting for now.”
If we’re honest, this isn’t a surprise. The demands of coaching at the NBA level make it next to impossible to perform what is essentially another full-time job. Yes, it’s true that Redick isn’t your average coach i.e., he has zero experience but again, the decision makes sense. This is all before we touch on the potential ramifications of having an active coach in the NBA hosting a podcast at the same time and one that involves the league’s biggest star, whom he coaches.
So, for fans of JJ Redick’s old job, they will sadly have to get their fix by watching and listening to him in his new one, though they can at least look forward to one last goodbye as stated by the man himself. “We’ll do something when I have a breather from what we have coming up. I’m gonna be drinking out of a firehouse for the next month, but at some point, we’ll just do something for all of the people that listened and we’ll have a small little video.”