The Los Angeles Lakers will enter the upcoming season with JJ Redick as their new head coach. While one could argue that the former NBA player is a good media analyst, many fans are concerned with Redick’s lack of coaching experience.

This has caused plenty of criticism, both toward the Lakers organization and the newly-hired coach himself. For Richard Jefferson,

however, the blame for the backlash falls more so on the team’s front office.

“The criticism in my opinion, there was a portion of it that had to do with JJ, and a lot portion of it had to do with the Lakers and their organization,” Jefferson said, during a recent episode of the Road Trippin’ podcast.

“Like let’s play a hypothetical game. If Pop (Gregg Popovich) were to retire and JJ were to get that job, and Pop were to go into the front office and be Pat Riley, and they were like JJ ‘you’re going to be Erik Spoelstra,’…I think the criticism would be exponentially lower. You look at the organization as a stable place. Okay, this is how they’re going to do. They’re going to build a young team, all of that stuff.”

“I think the criticism of JJ was a bit unfair but I think it was more of because the Lakers have been so up and down. So you’re like okay, you’re going to throw a person that everyone believes is an intelligent basketball mind and has the will and want to do it, but you’re going to put him in a situation that historically, and I say historically, since Phil Jackson left, has had in and out of coaches. And I think that part fell on JJ more,” Jefferson added.

So what does Richard Jefferson mean?
To simplify, Jefferson is stating that the Lakers’ past hiring decisions have played a big part in the ongoing criticism. Ever since Phil Jackson departed from the team, the succeeding coaches have had an overall combined record of 466-563. In other words, Jefferson implies that recency bias is a major factor in causing backlash. Add in the Lakers’ limited success with recent coaches to how they just hired someone whose only experience is handling a youth team — it’s basically an open door for disgruntlement among supporters.

Jefferson also used the San Antonio Spurs as an example of how Redick wouldn’t be too criticized if a similar scenario occurred out there in Texas. After all, the Spurs boast one of the greatest coaches of all time, and an out-of-the-box move such as hiring an inexperienced successor would still (arguably) draw trust from many of the San Antonio faithful.

All things considered, the best thing that JJ Redick can do is pile up the wins and prove his haters wrong. It may be a baptism of fire, but taking on big challenges is surely something that a former NBA player of 15 years isn’t new to.