LOS ANGELES — JJ Redick is one to self-assess, self-reflect, self-critique.

“Especially in this role, which I understood when I took the job, but understanding it even more now is, your team is always going to reflect your mood, your body language, your words,” the Lakers’ head coach told the Southern California News Group in October. “You want your team to ultimately reflect you.”

Redick has been open, since becoming the head coach of the Lakers in June 2024, that he meets with a performance coach – constantly rethinking how best to communicate with his players as he enters his third season calling X’s and O’s from the bench. Midway through the 2025-26 season, Redick came to a realization: some of the tools that helped Redick as a player had become “deterrents” for him as a coach.

Redick said through coaching the Lakers last season, a result that ended with a second-round playoff exit against the Oklahoma City Thunder, he learned that “calm is better.”

When he played in the NBA, Redick said as he recalled summer conversations with longtime friend and former Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, he took to the court with anger. Inner anger drove his competitiveness, the 42-year-old coach said in September, adding that the anger isn’t always a good thing when you’re the head honcho.

“In coaching, you constantly have to be aware of the players and how they respond to you,” Redick told SCNG. “I do believe there’s opportunities throughout the season to be a little bit demonstrative. That’s fine, and they’re going to respond to that. But if your only way to get on them or hold them accountable is through anger, they’re going to tune that out. Or they’re going to react negatively to it.”

“Coaching is all about trying to get your players in the best possible headspace. I can function with anger, that’s fine, I’ve done it my whole life. But not everybody can function with anger. And so, as a group, getting clear-minded, getting clarity, understanding the assignment, that’s more important than trying to get them riled up. And that took – that was a process to understand.”

Who better to understand Redick’s coaching conundrum than Krzyzewski himself – who first coached Redick from 2002-2006 en route to a pair of National Player of the Year honors before Duke retired his No. 4 jersey in 2007 and made him a Duke Athletics Hall of Famer in 2024.

“JJ is really smart and he functions under the theory that he’s always becoming,” Krzyzewski, affectionately called “Coach K,” told SCNG in a phone interview. “Who he is, who he was last year, is not necessarily the exact person, player, or coach that he’s going to be the next year. And so you’re always becoming. When you’re always becoming, that means you’re always willing to listen, willing to learn, willing to adapt to something new.”

Krzyzewski watched as a teenage Redick faced the vitriol from opposing crowds – facing verbal combat in each road environment the Blue Devils entered – and used the anger as “fuel,” mental jet propulsion to become the all-time great college basketball player he eventually became, the 79-year-old Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer said.

Anger is only bad if it destroys something good, Krzyzewski said. You can use anger as motivation, as a resource to inspire your team – an outlet that shows a level of care, he added.

“And so as he’s progressed, he still gets angry, which is good,” Krzyzewski said. “I was angry at different times my whole career. I think it’s a motivator. It’s an emotion. But then don’t let anger hurt a player or hurt a team. Make sure it helps a player and helps a team. And you get angry because it means a lot. You want to win, you want what you put out on the court to work. You want that guy, that player to function at the ability he’s capable of functioning at.”

That process of channeling anger is about maturing, Krzyzewski said, adding the caveat that maturing doesn’t mean that a human is immature. At 79, the former Team USA head coach who guided three Olympic gold medal-winning teams said he’s still maturing, learning how to communicate best for people in the present – not for people five years ago.

Krzyzewski and Redick agree that their friendship was near immediate, with Krzyzewski going on to say that he considered his star pupil a friend while coaching him at Duke.

“We trust one another,” Krzyzewski said. “We know we’re not going to BS one another, that we can tell each other the truth in a moment. And, I love that. I love JJ and I know he loves me and my family.”

Even if Redick wasn’t coaching, Krzyzewski added, their level of friendship would endure.

“He doesn’t call me and say, ‘How are we going to beat the Thunder?’” Krzyzewski said with a laugh. “We don’t talk about stuff like that. It’s more ‘How are you? What’s going on? What’s your mindset? Are you taking care of yourself?’ All that kind of stuff.”

Redick reiterated their bond beyond basketball – the link that forever intertwined their respective journeys through the Blue Devils.

“Coach and I, whether it was during the (head coach) interview process, when I got the job, a little bit my first year – we may talk randomly about coaching, but it’s not the extent of our relationship,” Redick told SCNG. “We’ve been friends for 20 years. So a lot of it is family-related, what he’s got going on. I love hearing about how he’s keeping himself busy, so it’s less about bouncing stuff off of him.”

Redick added that he gets a lot out of meeting and studying other coaches in one-off situations. For example, he said getting to spend time with Rams head coach Sean McVay was “insightful.”

Fifteen years as an NBA player and another handful of seasons analyzing the league as a broadcaster with ESPN is hardly the clearest route from post-playing career to a head coaching job in the league.

But so far, for Redick and the Lakers, it’s worked in spades.

Redick became the first Lakers head coach since Phil Jackson to reach the 50-win milestone in consecutive seasons – and he was the 16th coach in NBA history to record 50-win seasons in his first two years holding the proverbial whiteboard.

Only Pat Riley, Paul Westhead and Butch van Breda Kolff had attained the latter feat with the Lakers before Redick.

“I never thought of him as a coach – I always just thought of him as, well, he’s the best shooter we’ve ever had and one of the greatest players in college basketball history, and he’s a heck of a pro,” Krzyzewski said. “When he went into broadcasting, he knocked it out of the park right away. Like he wasn’t learning to do that. He had that. And his competitive drive was not fed. He wasn’t able to feed that hunger for competition through being a sports announcer or sports commentator or whatever. He craves competition. …”

Krzyzewski continued: “But he also craves the game. OK, competition at this level, how can I stay in the deep end with the game? ‘I want to coach.’ And so I was surprised when he said it to me, but then I wasn’t surprised, because I put those two things together. This guy will be competitive for his whole life, and he loves the game of basketball. And, you know what? He’s such a damn good competitor, and he understands the game. …”

“Once I got over the little bit of surprise of him doing it, and said ‘OK, that makes sense. I think you should go for it.’ And then obviously, he went for it, and he went for it in one of the most visible coaching assignments, the toughest ones you could have – the Los Angeles Lakers. Which, that doesn’t surprise me either.”

In the early days of the 2026-27 season with Game 10 arriving on Friday night against the Portland Trail Blazers, Redick is on track for a third season of regular-season success. Entering Thursday, the Lakers have a 7-2 record, rank second in points per game (121.8 ppg) and have the 17th-best defense to begin the season, holding foes to 113.9 ppg.

The Lakers’ hot start, with star guard Luka Doncic leading the way at a torrid pace at a league-leading 38.5 ppg to go with 8.1 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game, doesn’t mean that Redick’s team can’t also get better – or that Redick can’t improve himself.

“I always say that the job of a coach and the leader of an organization is very simple: Can you maximize the group, and do people enjoy coming to work?” Redick said Monday before the Lakers handily beat the Miami Heat. “It’s that simple.”

Krzyzewski added that Redick has increased empathy for his players because of his relatively recent retirement (September 2021). He was teammates with Doncic on the Dallas Mavericks and played against five of his 16 fully-guaranteed contract players during his NBA career.

Feedback and adjustment, using his experiences in the NBA and beyond, goes back to what Krzyzewski said he enjoys about Redick’s internal philosophy.

Redick, more than 20 years after meeting and learning from Krzyzewski, is always “becoming.”

“JJ’s one of a kind and I always loved that about him,” Krzyzewski said. “And I love the fact that he works his butt off. He’s always trying to get better.”