Road to Duke
JJ Redick was born in Cookeville, Tennessee, and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, the second of five children in a family wired for basketball. His father, Ken, had played two seasons at Ohio Wesleyan University. His mother, Jeanie, was a nurse. His twin sisters, Catie and Alyssa, both played at Campbell University. His younger sister Abigail played at Virginia Tech and Drexel. His brother David was a football player at Marshall. In the Redick household, competition was the family language.
His nickname came from the twins. As a toddler, the family called him ‘J.’ The sisters kept repeating it — ‘J, J’ — and it stuck. His middle name, Clay, came from his father’s background as a stoneware potter. Jonathan Clay Redick became JJ to the world before he could walk.
At Cave Spring High School in Roanoke, Redick became the best player in Virginia. He averaged 28.3 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists as a senior. In the 2002 VHSL Class AAA state championship game, he scored 43 points — a championship-game record across all classifications that stood for 16 years, until Mac McClung broke it in 2018. He finished as Virginia’s all-time AAA leading scorer with 2,215 career points and shot over 44 percent from three. He played AAU ball for the Boo Williams All-Stars, whose national championship teams faced future NBA stars like Dwyane Wade.
He was the 2002 McDonald’s All-American Game MVP, scoring 26 points on 10-of-15 shooting and winning the three-point competition. Ranked the No. 2 shooting guard and No. 13 overall prospect in the country. Virginia Mr. Basketball. Parade All-American. Every major program wanted him. He chose Duke.
At Duke
JJ Redick left Duke as the most prolific scorer in school history and one of the most decorated — and most despised — players in the history of college basketball. He scored 2,769 career points, a Duke record. He made 457 career three-pointers, an NCAA record at the time of his graduation. He set the ACC single-season free throw percentage record at .953 during his sophomore year, including a streak of 54 consecutive free throws. He led Duke to a 116-23 record, three ACC Tournament championships, and a Final Four. He was a two-time National Player of the Year, two-time ACC Player of the Year, two-time ACC Tournament MVP, three-time All-American, and the 2006 Sullivan Award winner as the nation’s top amateur athlete. His jersey No. 4 was retired in February 2007.
Freshman (2002–03): The Arrival. Redick led the team with 30 points in the ACC Tournament championship game against NC State. He averaged 15.0 points per game — the fourth-highest freshman scoring average in Duke history behind only Johnny Dawkins, Gene Banks, and Mike Gminski. He set the ACC and Duke freshman record with a .919 free throw percentage. He made 95 three-pointers.
Sophomore (2003–04): The Final Four — and the Breaking Point. Duke reached the Final Four, where they fell to Connecticut. Redick was named to the All-Final Four team. But the season was defined by something darker: JJ Redick had become the most hated player in college basketball. Students from rival schools discovered his cell phone number; he estimated receiving 50 to 75 hate calls per day. Opposing crowds screamed vulgar things about his 12-year-old sister. Custom t-shirts with his photo that read ‘When I grow up, I want to name my kid JJ Redick’ on the front and ‘and beat him every day’ on the back. An NFL team owner talking trash to him courtside. An entire arena chanting an obscenity. He nearly quit. In December of his sophomore year, he had his twin sisters meet him on campus for dinner. ‘I don’t want to play anymore,’ he told them. ‘This is not for me. It’s not fun.’ He turned to writing poetry as an outlet. CBS Sports would later name him the ‘most hated current athlete in America.’
The Transformation: Summer Before Junior Year. Coach K sat him down in late May and told him the truth: ‘You’ve been good. You were All-ACC and a third-team All-American. We made the Final Four. So you’ve been good, but what you’re doing isn’t good enough.’ Krzyzewski kept him from playing USA Basketball that summer. Redick walked around campus carrying a jug of water. He lost 23 pounds, dropping from over 215 to 192. He won every preseason conditioning test.
Junior (2004–05): The transformed Redick averaged 21.8 points per game and won ACC Player of the Year and consensus National Player of the Year honors. Duke earned a No. 1 seed but lost in the Sweet Sixteen. He was playing over 37 minutes per game now, leaner, faster, more dynamic, able to create his own shot rather than just catch and shoot.
Senior (2005–06): The Record-Breaker. Redick averaged 26.8 points per game — a Duke single-season record. He broke Curtis Staples’ NCAA career three-point record against Wake Forest. He passed Dickie Hemric’s 51-year-old ACC career scoring record with a pair of free throws against Temple. He won every major national player of the year award: Naismith, Wooden, AP, NABC. He was a two-time team captain, a history major with a minor in cultural anthropology, and still the most hated player in America.
The final act was bittersweet. In the 2006 NCAA Tournament, LSU’s Garrett Temple — a 6’5 defensive specialist with a long wingspan — chased Redick relentlessly. The nation’s No. 2 scorer shot 3-for-18 and scored just 11 points. Duke lost.
After Duke
The Orlando Magic selected Redick with the 11th pick in the 2006 draft. His early years were a test of patience. He competed for minutes, battled back spasms, and spent stretches as a third-string player. In January 2008, he posted on his blog that it had ‘been proven that even if I play well in the limited minutes I get, not much is going to change.’ He asked his agent about a trade. But he kept working. By the 2008-09 season, he was helping the Magic reach the NBA Finals. It was the first of 13 consecutive playoff appearances for Redick.
A three-team sign-and-trade sent Redick to the Clippers on a four-year, $27 million deal. He became a full-time starter for the first time in his career at age 29 — starting 218 of his first 219 games. He scored a career-high 40 points against Houston in January 2016 on 9-of-12 from three. He led the NBA in three-point shooting at 47.5% during the 2015-16 season. He made 200 or more three-pointers in four of five seasons from 2014 to 2019.
Redick signed a one-year, $23 million deal with Philadelphia in 2017 and posted his best overall statistical season in 2018-19: 18.1 points per game on 44% shooting and 39.7% from three. He moved to New Orleans in 2019, was traded to Dallas in 2021, and retired on September 21 of that year. His farewell was quintessentially Redick — announced on his own podcast: ‘I started playing basketball 30 years ago in my backyard on an uneven patch of dirt, gravel, and grass.’ Fifteen seasons. 940 games. 12,028 points. 1,950 career three-pointers — 15th most in NBA history.
In January 2016, while still an active player with the Clippers, Redick launched a podcast on Yahoo! Sports — becoming the first active NBA player to host one. The podcast evolved through multiple platforms. In August 2020, Redick and producer Tommy Alter co-founded ThreeFourTwo Productions — the name a reference to the 342 shots Redick took every Sunday during the offseason as part of his shooting regimen. Their flagship, ‘The Old Man and the Three,’ launched during the NBA’s COVID bubble with Damian Lillard as the first guest. It became one of the most popular sports podcasts in the world, amassing over 320 million YouTube views. The title was a play on Hemingway — Redick saw himself as the aging craftsman, still learning. After retirement, he joined ESPN as an analyst and quickly rose to the lead broadcast team by February 2024. LeBron James shared a clip and captioned it ‘JJ FOR PRESIDENT!!’ In March 2024, the two launched a joint podcast, ‘Mind the Game,’ focused on basketball strategy and analysis.
Where Is He Now
On June 26, 2024, the Los Angeles Lakers hired JJ Redick as their 29th head coach, signing him to a four-year contract. He had never coached at any level. The hire came after the Lakers’ pursuit of Dan Hurley was rebuffed (Hurley turned down a six-year, $70 million offer to stay at UConn). GM Rob Pelinka was sold on Redick’s basketball IQ, his ability to connect with players, and his relationship with LeBron James.
Redick’s first season exceeded expectations. He coached the Lakers to a 50-32 record, the third-best in the Western Conference, despite navigating a mid-season trade for Luka Doncic and the challenge of integrating ball-dominant superstars. The Lakers made the playoffs but were eliminated by the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games in the first round.
The season was also marked by personal devastation. On January 7, 2025, the Palisades Fire swept through Los Angeles. Redick’s rental home in Pacific Palisades burned to the ground. Chelsea evacuated their sons, Knox and Kai, while the team was on the road in Dallas. Everything they owned from nearly 20 years together was gone: his son’s charcoal painting of a lighthouse, the boys’ basketball card collections saved up from birthday money and chores, Chelsea’s engagement ring. Austin Reaves embraced him at the next practice.
In September 2025, the Lakers extended Redick’s contract through the 2029-30 season. He spent the offseason meeting with Rams coach Sean McVay to pick his brain on offensive concepts. He has set a remarkable NBA record: the Lakers are 57-4 when leading after three quarters under his watch, the best mark in league history.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Chelsea Kilgore Redick, whom he married in 2010. They have two sons, Knox and Kai. His podcast empire continues without him — ‘The Old Man and the Three’ was rebranded as ‘The Young Man and the Three,’ with Cam Johnson of the Nuggets taking the host chair. Redick has sworn off social media to focus on coaching. ‘I am excommunicated from the content space,’ he said with a grin.
He has four tattoos of Bible verses on his body: Isaiah 40:31, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 40:1–3, and Philippians 4:13, plus a sleeve of the Virgin Mary. He graduated from Duke with a degree in history and a minor in cultural anthropology. He still holds Duke’s all-time scoring record. His net worth is estimated at approximately $50 million.
The transformation is the story. A kid from Roanoke who shot on an uneven patch of dirt, gravel, and grass. The most hated player in America who nearly quit because strangers were making signs about beating his future children. A poet who couldn’t find another way to process the pain. A role player who reinvented himself three times — as a starter, as a media mogul, and now as the coach of the Lakers.