LeBron James was in rare form on Wednesday during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
Most notably, he blasted both Stephen A Smith and Brian Windhorst in a rare callout. He also made sure to bring up some of the old criticisms that surrounded him, JJ Redick and the Lakers at the time of his hiring.
When asked by McAfee what the culture is like around the Lakers under Redick, LeBron went a bit of a different direction before offering some insight.
“I think the best thing about JJ is he’s just a great podcaster…He’s just a podcaster that for some odd reason became a head coach and all because of me. It’s the weirdest thing in the world. Those conversations have died down. One thing about JJ, he bleeds the game and he breathes the game of basketball every single day. He’s one of those guys, kind of just like me, if we lose a game or we didn’t play up to par, there’s no such thing as sleeping that night. There’s no such thing as sleeping until the next match, until the next game. He’s a dickhead. And I love it.”
It feels like long, long ago that the criticisms around Redick were that he was a podcaster who only got the job because of LeBron. Whether you choose to believe them or not, LeBron and Redick said they did not talk to one another during the interview process and only had a conversation just before the latter accepted the job.
Hilariously, when re-launching his “Mind the Game” podcast with Steve Nash as his co-host, LeBron gave a disclaimer this time around.
Those criticisms, even as shallow as they were at the time, immediately looked awful with Redick’s performance on the sideline. In fact, while it’s diminished a bit over the last week with the losing streak, he has a strong argument to finish in the top three in Coach of the Year voting.
At this point, it’s become commonplace for Redick to be as good as he is. After the early shock of having a good coach in charge following years of Darvin Ham, it just became accepted that he was really good.
There really wasn’t enough talk about how dumb people were about his hiring. While it was a risk, it was definitely glossed over too much that he was clearly very knowledgeable about the game in a way that would make him successful.
Now, he has the Lakers set for years to come. They have a young coach to build around for the future. And a great podcaster, if he wants to pick that back up, too.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at@JacobRude or on Bluesky at@jacobrude.bsky.social.