NBA Fans Drop Memes for LeBron James, JJ Redick amid Dan Hurley, Lakers HC Rumors

June 6, 2024

All of us who assumed JJ Redick’s podcast partnership with LeBron James gave him a leg up in the Los Angeles Lakers’ coaching search appear to have egg on our face. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Thursday that Connecticut’s Dan Hurley is being targeted by the Lakers, who are preparing to extend him a “massive, long-term contract offer” in the coming days. This comes two days after Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium reported the Lakers were “zeroing” in on Redick as the frontrunner to replace Darvin Ham.

NBA fans had some fun with the apparent switcheroo by dropping a series of memes about James, Redick, and Hurley. Redick’s candidacy has always felt strange, just because it’s hard to drop a first-time head coach at any level into the NBA. When you combine that with the pressure of coaching the Lakers and James, it would be close to an impossible situation for him to enter. This isn’t to suggest Redick will be a bad coach if he does decide to take that route, but Hurley would make a lot more sense for the Lakers if ends up being the choice.

The Lakers need a coach who can bridge the gap between the present, assuming James stays with the club either by opting in to his deal for next season or signing a new contract, and long-term future with Anthony Davis as the face of the franchise. Hurley has 14 seasons of experience as a head coach at the college level. He turned around a UConn program that fell out of the ranks of the nation’s elite programs in the wake of NCAA violations under former head coach Kevin Ollie. The 51-year-old Hurley rebuilt the Huskies into the premier program in the nation with national titles in each of the past two seasons. They became the first team since the 2005-06 and 2006-07 Florida Gators to win back-to-back national titles. Los Angeles has only won two postseason series, both during the 2022-23 season, since winning the NBA championship during the 2019-20 campaign.