Joel Embiid has shared his candid thoughts about JJ Redick taking up the Lakers head coaching role and has given a warning.
Redick has been handed the reins in LA, despite having no prior NBA coaching experience and Embiid thinks it could end badly for the former Sixer.
“If I was him, I don’t know if that’s a perfect situation,” Embiid told The New York Times. “Maybe he thinks that’s a perfect situation. But if you’re coming in, especially with a job like the Lakers, it’s kind of a make-or-break situation, because if you succeed, great, you’re going to be coaching for years. But if you don’t succeed, those coaches are usually bound to be fired within a year or two. I love him, I’m happy for him, but that’s a tough job.”
Over the past 13 years, no Lakers coach has survived longer than three seasons.
Current Kings head coach and former Warriors assistant, Mike Brown, was fired from the Lakers top job five games into his second season with the team in 2012.
He wishes he never took the job in the first place.
“If I could do it again,” Brown said on All the Smoke podcast last year, “I probably wouldn’t.”
However, Redick just has to be better than Darvin Ham’s 90-74 record with the Lakers.
The former sharpshooter has big ambitions for the team and is under no illusions about what he’s getting himself into.
“…I just want to say, sitting in this seat, I know what the expectations are for the Lakers,” Redick said during his introductory press conference in June. “The Lakers fans are some of the most passionate in the world, and the expectation is a championship. So it’s my job, Rob’s [Pelinka] job, all of us, to deliver a championship-caliber team. That’s what I signed up for.”
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