OKLAHOMA CITY — When JJ Redick first met Mark Daigneault, the current Lakers head coach was in the first chapter of his post-playing career.
As an ESPN analyst, asked to dissect the ins and outs of the league, Redick spoke to the 2024 NBA Coach of the Year during a production meeting, receiving intel on the young Oklahoma City Thunder squad that was developing into a title contender. On Monday, during the Thunder’s final practice before the best-of-seven second-round series against the Lakers began, Daigneault told reporters that he had shown film of Redick playing defense to his players – something Redick remembers from those ESPN pregame meetings.
“(Daigneault) pulled me aside afterwards and mentioned a very specific series that he was showing clips (of Redick) to a couple of guys,” Redick said Tuesday before Game 1 tipped off at Paycom Center. “I think probably because of how I look, I get labeled as like a duck. But I was a duck in my first two years, and I was a duck my last three years. But in between, I was a pretty good defender.”
Redick shared that he has only ever shown one video of himself to his players, while trying to prove a point about being willing to take a charge during the regular season last year.
“I showed a clip of me taking a charge on LeBron (James), catching his spin move and it was his left elbow that went into my eye, and I got nine stitches and a concussion,” Redick said. “But that’s the only clip I’ve ever shown them of me.”
Daigneault and Redick not only shared their short tenure on opposite sides of the coaching spectrum – the coach-to-media interactions that Redick once took part in – but also a shared colleague: Lakers assistant coach Scott Brooks.
When Brooks was the head coach of the Thunder, a position he held from 2008-2015, Daigneault was the head coach of the Thunder’s G League squad (Oklahoma City Blue) during the end of Brooks’ tenure. Diagneault shared at Monday’s practice that Brooks provided him his first opportunity to see how an NBA franchise was run, telling reporters that Brooks was “gracious” with his access.
“It was my first exposure to the NBA, and I was a G League coach,” Daigneault said. “I had never coached a 24-second shot clock before or been a head coach. He was gracious enough to let me be around the team in training camp, and when there were home games, I’d be around, preseason stuff and their staff meetings. I knew nothing about the NBA at that time, and so everything that I was seeing was new to me. He opened the door.”
Redick said when he was first “rumored” to be a top candidate for the Lakers’ head coach job during the 2024 offseason, his phone buzzed repeatedly, alerting him to Brooks as a potential coaching staff addition.
“I was getting hit up by 20, 25 people across the NBA saying, you got to hire Scott Brooks,” Redick said.
So, Redick took Brooks to a golf course in Los Angeles after becoming head coach – a pseudo-job interview, he said – to determine if Brooks was the right fit for his coaching staff.
Brooks, as Daigneault once learned, was the right fit for Redick too.
“I felt like somebody that if I was going to spend a lot of time around someone I wanted it to be Scott Brooks,” Redick said. “He’s an amazing basketball coach. He’s an even better person, and he’s meant the world, not only just to me, but really everybody on our staff, particularly our younger coaches. He’s been an incredible mentor, an incredible sounding board and a great friend to all of us.”
