If the NBA’s premier franchise hiring a coaching neophyte to lead it back into the contender ranks sounds strange to you, you are not alone. It is, at best, a bold move by Lakers leadership and, at worst, a desperate attempt to keep Redick’s podcast partner, LeBron James, happy before he likely opts out of his contract and hits free agency.
Even the names the Lakers invoke as past success stories to justify this hire — Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra and Steve Kerr — had significantly more experience at the time of their hires than Redick.
Riley was an assistant coach under Paul Westhead for parts of three seasons before he was given the top job in 1981. Spoelstra worked under Riley for nearly a decade with the Miami Heat, mostly as a video coordinator and assistant coach. Kerr had three years of experience as the Phoenix Suns‘ general manager before joining the Golden State Warriors.
Meanwhile, Redick’s post-retirement career has consisted of three years as an ESPN broadcaster and podcaster.
Redick’s hire isn’t entirely unprecedented, though. NBA teams have hired former players who have never been on the other side of the clipboard, it’s just a rare occurrence in the long history of the NBA.
So in the interest of evaluating just how big a leap of faith the Lakers are taking, let’s take a look at all the other times an NBA team decided NBA or college coaching experience wasn’t a prerequisite for the full-time job and how it worked out. We’re not going to break down the coaches who had real front-office experience like Kerr, but will include them at the bottom.
Steve Nash, Brooklyn Nets, 2020
Career record: 94-67, two playoff appearances in three seasons
Best playoff result: Eastern Conference semifinals
We’re starting with a story the Lakers probably don’t want you to think about as Redick takes the reins.
The Nets hiring the Hall of Fame point guard to coach Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving was even more controversial than Redick, to the point that Nash publicly admitted he skipped the line into the NBA coaching ranks. The hire was, above all, surprising, with Nash barely involved in basketball for years outside of some consulting work with the Golden State Warriors.
It went about as well as Nash’s (and the Nets’) detractors said it would. From the start, Durant and Irving didn’t seem to see Nash as their head coach. Actually, it was a little more literal than that. Irving outright said before their first game he didn’t see their team having a head coach, while Durant described coaching the team as “a collaborative effort,” as in he and Irving could both serve as coaches.
Nash managed to last two seasons, with disappointing playoff results in both, and got canned while the team was bathed in controversy due to Irving.
Success? Absolutely not
Derek Fisher, New York Knicks, 2014
Career record: 40-96, zero playoff appearances in two seasons
Best playoff result: None
The veteran point guard (a lot of these guys were point guards) went straight from the Oklahoma City Thunder‘s rotation to the head of the Knicks’ bench. The reason why: Phil Jackson.
Fisher and Jackson won five rings together with the Los Angeles Lakers, and Jackson, newly installed as the president of the New York Knicks, wanted a coach who intimately understood his triangle offense. They managed to persuade Carmelo Anthony to re-sign and swung trades that acquired, among others, Shane Larkin and Quincy Acy.
The results were disastrous. Fisher lasted a season and a half and was fired after dropping nine of his last 10 games. He later found work with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, but never found another coaching job in the NBA.
Success? Nope
Jason Kidd, Brooklyn Nets, 2013
Career record: 323-296, five playoff appearances in eight seasons
Best playoff result: Lost NBA Finals
Kidd is one of the best point guards ever, but his coaching career has been an extraordinarily mixed bag.
Like Fisher, Kidd went straight from playing to taking over the Nets. And like Redick, Kidd took over a Brooklyn team attempting to compete with some aging former champions in Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Year 1 was somewhat turbulent and ended in an unsurprising loss to James’ Heat.
There would be no Year 2 with the Nets, as Kidd basically attempted a coup against general manager Billy King, lost and ended up with the Milwaukee Bucks. Kidd spent the next four years posting roughly .500 records with Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, who won the Finals three years after firing him.
Then came an assistant job with the Lakers and, now, the Dallas Mavericks job, where Kidd reached the NBA Finals with Luka Dončić and Irving.
Success? Not with the Nets. Or the Bucks. The Mavericks … so far, so good.
Mark Jackson, Golden State Warriors, 2011
Career record: 121-109, two playoff appearances in three seasons
Best playoff result: Western Conference semifinals
Speaking of point guard head coaches whose teams won a championship not long after firing them … Mark Jackson, come on down.
Jackson joined the Warriors after a few years of broadcasting with ESPN and led the team to the first playoffs of Stephen Curry‘s career. The Warriors won 51 games in 2013-14, but there were plenty of issues behind the scenes. Jackson struggled to manage his coaching staff and stories later emerged of some pretty clear homophobia on his part.
Oh, and there was that time Jackson allegedly took an injured Curry to his church, where the future MVP was pressured into attempting to walk on a sprained ankle. After three years with the Warriors, Jackson was fired and went back to ESPN, where he was laid off last year.
Success? No, but some will argue he laid the groundwork for the Warriors dynasty.
