Scott Brooks Drew 25 NBA Recommendations Before Lakers Hire
Scott Brooks ended up on JJ Redick’s Lakers staff after a wave of advice from around the league and a golf-course meeting in Los Angeles. Redick said he wanted to see whether Brooks fit before bringing him in, and he liked what he found. The move now threads the Lakers’ coaching setup into a second-round series against the Thunder.
Redick’s Brooks decision
Redick said he was getting messages from 20 to 25 people across the NBA telling him to hire Brooks. He added that he took Brooks to a golf course in Los Angeles after becoming head coach because he wanted to determine whether the former Thunder coach was the right fit for his staff.
“I was getting hit up by 20, 25 people across the NBA saying, you got to hire Scott Brooks,” Redick said before Game 1 tipped off at Paycom Center. “I felt like somebody that if I was going to spend a lot of time around someone I wanted it to be Scott Brooks.”
Redick then described Brooks in blunt terms: “He’s an amazing basketball coach. He’s an even better person, and he’s meant the world, not only just to me, but really everybody on our staff, particularly our younger coaches. He’s been an incredible mentor, an incredible sounding board and a great friend to all of us.”
Daigneault and Brooks
Mark Daigneault’s link to Brooks runs back to the end of Brooks’ Thunder tenure, when Daigneault was coaching the Oklahoma City Blue. Daigneault said Brooks gave him his first chance to see how an NBA franchise was run, and he had access in training camp, home games, preseason activities and staff meetings.
“It was my first exposure to the NBA, and I was a G League coach,” Daigneault said Monday at practice. “I had never coached a 24-second shot clock before or been a head coach.”
He said Brooks was “gracious” and added, “I knew nothing about the NBA at that time, and so everything that I was seeing was new to me. He opened the door.”
Paycom Center matchup
The coaching connection sits inside a best-of-seven second-round series that opened with Game 1 at Paycom Center. Redick and Daigneault had already crossed paths before this matchup, too: Redick first met Daigneault in a production meeting when he was working as an analyst.
That shared history carried into the series in a practical way. Daigneault said Monday that he had shown film of Redick playing defense to his players, while Redick said he had been shown clips of himself during pregame meetings and later used a clip of himself taking a charge on LeBron James during the regular season last year.
Redick said that play ended with nine stitches and a concussion after James’ left elbow went into his eye, a reminder that the current series is being filtered through old tape, old relationships and one coach who now sits on the Lakers bench after years in Oklahoma City.
