New Lakers head coach JJ Redick must avoid same fate as forgotten Cavaliers coach who clashed with LeBron James and paid the ultimate price
LeBron James' NBA coaches have finally hit double figures.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Lakers agreed to hire former NBA player-turned-ESPN-analyst JJ Redick on a four-year contract to become their new head coach, according to multiple insider reports
It means that for the 10th time in his 21-season NBA career, LeBron James has a new head coach.
Redick, a rookie coach with no prior coaching experience in college or the NBA, is about to undertake one of the most daunting jobs in all of professional sports.
No, not coaching the Lakers. Coaching LeBron James.
The King has royal standards and wields ungodly power in both locker rooms and front offices.
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It's no coincidence he's earned the nickname 'LeGM' due to his overwhelming influence on decisions that are typically reserved for front-office executives and general managers.
Fortunately for Redick, he already has James’ seal of approval thanks to their work together on their joint podcast, Mind The Game.
But that favor will only last so long if the championship-aspiring purple and gold aren’t winning games.The 39-year-old James doesn’t have the patience nor the time to wait around.
James is unquestionably the best ally to have in The Association but also the worst person to get on the wrong side of.
All too often he has been a coaching Grim Reaper whose fatal kiss of death has been terminal to NBA careers.
Just ask David Blatt.
Israeli-American Blatt was hired by the Cleveland Cavaliers in June 2014 and arrived with excellent European pedigree but, crucially, no NBA experience.
LeBron shocked everybody, including the Cavs, when he announced his decision to return to the organization weeks later and, suddenly, Blatt had a nuclear bomb of a player and personality on his hands that he had no business being responsible for.
Despite his inexperience, Blatt endured a relatively successful one-and-a-half year stint in Cleveland.
He won the Eastern Conference during the 2014-15 season - the Cavs’ first since 2007 - and guided them to the Finals where they lost the Golden State Warriors, 4-2.
The next season, Blatt held a 30-11 record with the Cavs and was likely going to be the East’s All-Star coach.
It mattered little, and he was brutally fired never to return to the NBA again.
The warning signs were there, though. They were big, fluorescent lights spelling out that Blatt simply did not have the trust of Cleveland’s veterans, including Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and especially LeBron.
To say James and Blatt didn’t see eye to eye would be an understatement, with The King frequently, and publicly, undermining his head coach.
Cracks were beginning to show just months into Blatt’s tenure.
By the end of 2014, James started changing his role in the Cavs' offense and began playing point guard while moving Irving off the ball.
"No, I can do it on my own," James responded when asked if he’d consulted Blatt on the decision. "I'm past those days where I have to ask."
In 2015, James openly admitted to reporters that he ‘scratched’ Blatt’s call on a game-winning shot against the Bulls.
"To be honest, the play that was drawn up, I scratched it," James told reporters. "I just told coach, 'Give me the ball.' We're either going to go to overtime or I'm going to win it for us. It was that simple.
"I was supposed to take the ball out," James continued. "I told coach, 'There's no way I'm taking the ball out, unless I can shoot it over the backboard and it goes in.' I told him, 'Have somebody else take the ball out, give me the ball, and everybody get out of the way.'"
LeBron’s apologists might chalk that up to an all-timer asserting his will and taking over a game, much like Michael Jordan did in his prime.
But MJ never ripped up Phil Jackson’s playbook for his own ideas and James’ incident was not in isolation.
In the 2015 Finals, ESPN’s Marc Stein witnessed Blatt and LeBron’s fraught relationship first hand.
“James essentially called timeouts and made substitutions. He openly barked at Blatt after decisions he didn't like.”
“He huddled frequently with Lue, often looking at anyone other than Blatt.”
“It’s not like David Blatt was a bad coach, we just needed someone that could play chess with [Warriors head coach] Steve Kerr at that level, which Ty Lue did,” Channing Frye, one of LeBron’s teammates at the time, said.
"He [LeBron] was an NBA player for his whole life, one of the best ever in the history of the game, and I was a first-time NBA coach, who had spent the rest of his career in Europe," he added.
After leaving Ohio, Blatt went on to coach Darüşşafaka of the Turkish Super League/EuroLeague and Olympiacos of the Greek Basket League/EuroLeague.
He briefly worked as a consultant for the New York Knicks in 2019 and more recently was a consultant for the Canadian national basketball team in the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup.
During the upcoming season, he is set to serve as a consultant for the Arizona Wildcats.
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Despite the fact he’s never hit the same heights as he did with the Cavs between 2014-2016, Blatt is proud of what he achieved during his tumultuous tenure as the head coach of one of basketball’s most gifted and challenging stars.
“Looking back, probably the timing was not right in long-term and probably that’s why I am not in the NBA, but it’s not something that I miss. I coached in the NBA finals, I got an Eastern conference title, so…"