Former Los Angeles Lakers and NBA veteran Jared Dudley made an intriguing comment about his former teammate JJ Redick being given a head coaching role.
Redick became the Lakers’ head coach earlier this offseason despite having no experience in coaching at any level, having retired from the league just a few years ago while being a regular debate panelist on Stephen A. Smith’s ESPN First Take. Redick’s name had been floated out as a possibility to land the role while hosting a podcast with LeBron James – before the team missed out on first-choice option Dan Hurley before quickly announcing Redick as their man.
His former teammate with the Los Angeles Clippers, Dudley, is now in his fourth year as an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks – admitting his dream is to become a head coach while sending a dig aimed at Redick.
Speaking at the Summer League, where Dudley is coaching the Mavericks’ team, he said: “I wanna head coach. That’s my dream and ambition is to be able to do that.
“But at the same time you can have that. Some of us aren’t JJ Redick and get to go right away. Sometimes you’ve got to put some of this… I gotta be able to do two, three years and four or five years as an assistant and then we all have different times. And my time will come later on but my time will eventually come.”
Many had taken Dudley’s words as the coach being sour over Redick jumping into the role, but he was quick to clarify that he is pleased for his former teammate. On X, he wrote: “JJ is my guy! Great opportunity for him! Jkidd did it so did Steve Kerr and my boy Steve Nash! Very rare opportunity! Ex players! Gotta love it!”
