Head coach JJ Redick and the Los Angeles Lakers hopefully won’t spend much time on social media after their playoff elimination at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Lakers, a popular and thus polarizing franchise, and their first-year head coach have been the subject of much discussion after falling in the first round in five games. For fans, it’s a period of mourning; for analysts, it’s the season of “told you so”; and for the inevitable ill-wishers, it’s party time, and one of those parties resurfaced an old clip from JJ Redick’s analyst days that doesn’t look great in hindsight.
JJ Redick’s Outburst Goes Viral Again
An X user put together a compilation contrasting Redick’s comments about Doc Rivers during the 2024 season with Redick’s post-game answers after games four and five of the Lakers’ first-round series.
JJ Reddick on Doc Rivers last year
“There’s always an excuse… there’s never accountability from that guy”
JJ Reddick after the Lakers were eliminated in the first round
“We played 13 games with our playoff rotation… these things take time. It doesn’t happen over night” pic.twitter.com/STKJbCtzLh
— SI (@SI_02_) May 1, 2025
In 2024, in an ESPN appearance with Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe, Redick, then an analyst for the network, criticized Doc Rivers, who took over as the Milwaukee Bucks head coach in the middle of the 2023-24 season.
“The trend is always making excuses,” Redick said in a segment weighing the Finals chances of the Eastern Conference-leading Boston Celtics against the third-place Bucks and the rest of the East. “Doc, we get it. Taking over a team in the middle of the season is hard, just like getting traded in the middle of the season is hard for a player.”
The compilation then shifts to Redick’s post-game press conference after the Lakers’ elimination in game five, with a reporter asking the head coach about the team’s chemistry.
“We played 13 games with our playoff rotation in the regular season,” Redick responded. “LeBron [James] and Luka [Dončić] obviously played more than that together. These things take time, you know, Luka just went through it in Dallas with Kyrie [Irving], and it doesn’t happen overnight.”
It was Redick’s second notable moment in a post-game press conference during the series. Following the Lakers’ loss in game four, in which the team made no substitutions in the fourth quarter, Redick stormed out of the press conference after becoming frustrated by a question about the decision.
Redick was hired by the Lakers before the 2024-25 season after working as an NBA analyst and podcast host upon the conclusion of his playing days. Having spent his final season with a young Luka Dončić in Dallas in 2020-21, Redick played for six teams, including the Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Clippers, and Philadelphia 76ers in a 15-year NBA career.
The Lakers finished 50-32 in Redick’s first year as head coach, the team’s first 50-win season since a title-winning year in 2020-21, led by LeBron James and midseason-acquisition Dončić.