So, let’s get this straight.
J.J. Redick played basketball at Duke University for four years, competing in the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament all four years. He was drafted in the first round in 2006 by the Orlando Magic and proceeded to play until 2021 in the NBA, a league where roughly three out of four players is black.
On Monday, he was hired as the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. Then, as CNN reported Wednesday, a Duke alumni and Lakers fan accused him on social media of using the n-word on her, and saying that he was the only white man who had ever used it on her in her life.
The Reddick camp has already responded, with a flat statement from a Reddick representative to the celebrity website TMZ:
It leaves no room for wiggling, nor for rationalization:
“No, it never happened.”
Question: Why on earth would we believe it had?
But first, the facts. After Redick’s hiring was announced, Halleemah Nash, founder of a coaching and consulting company called Rosecrans Ventures, which has 128 followers on the social media platform X, claimed that Redick, who is white, dropped the mother of all slurs on her.
“I’ve only been called the N word to my face by a white man once in my life and it was on the campus of Duke University while I was doing work with the basketball team,” she wrote Tuesday.
“And today he was named the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. What a world.”
I’ve only been called the N word to my face by a white man once in my life and it was on the campus of Duke University while I was doing work with the basketball team. And today he was named the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. What a world.
— Halleemah Nash (@halleemah) June 25, 2024
This has already been viewed 29 million times as of early Thursday morning — from an account that has just over 5,300 followers.
But Nash wasn’t done: “For context, this was years ago and Im a believer that we all have space to grow- especially from our college level maturity. We live in a world where these exchanges happen and the intersection of race and privilege and lack of accountability all collided w/that presser.”
For context, this was years ago and Im a believer that we all have space to grow- especially from our college level maturity. We live in a world where these exchanges happen and the intersection of race and privilege and lack of accountability all collided w/that presser.
— Halleemah Nash (@halleemah) June 25, 2024
The “presser” she was talking about, assumedly, was the media briefing Redick held Monday after being named the Lakers coach in which he dropped the f-bomb ill-advisedly and claimed — somewhat incredibly — that he hadn’t talked with Lakers star LeBron James, with whom he hosts a podcast, about taking the job as the team’s coach.
Someone in the room “even loudly groaned as Redick said it,” SB Nation noted.
“LeBron and I didn’t talk about the Lakers job” 👀
JJ Redick says LeBron didn’t want to be involved in Lakers HC search pic.twitter.com/OW3Lb9pL9y
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 24, 2024
OK, fine. That’s improbable, but perhaps not impossible.
You know what else is improbable? The idea that J.J. Redick has played basketball at the highest levels possible since his Amateur Athletic Union days and is somehow a secret racist.
Do you believe J.J. Redick should be fired?
During his time at Duke, he was arguably the biggest star on the team. He played for 15 seasons in the NBA — perhaps not as the biggest star, but certainly a star, and someone who was instantly recognizable to those who followed the game. He was a solid role player and was good for 10 points a game, if not more, most seasons.
After playing basketball, he transitioned into covering basketball, in which he did work for The Ringer, ESPN and, of course, his podcast with James. This put him into contact with basketball talent on a day-in, day-out basis for the majority of his adult life.
We are now talking about one woman who claims that Redick called her the n-word to her face at some unspecified time at an unspecified place — presumably at Duke University, where he was not an extremely young man — with no corroboration for her own story and no similar stories having emerged.
We are expected to take this seriously, because #BelieveAllOppressed, or whatever. However, everyone knows better than to believe white people can just casually drop the n-word, especially to a black person and especially just once, on a really bad day.
That word is so odious and hateful and rebarbative and execrable on so many levels that, once it has been uttered, it normally comes not at the beginning but at the end of a long pattern of disturbed, reprehensible behavior that is observable and can almost always be corroborated with other alarming racial behavior — that may not have involved that word, but which is certainly observable.
Perhaps the black community can reclaim it among themselves if they so choose — God knows it’s a prevalent enough word among rappers, for instance. But almost all whites will upbraid and ostracize one of their own for using it so quickly, especially in the face of a black person, that the speaker’s life will be turned upside-down.
Consider the fact that Redick’s life already has been significantly jostled and this is one dubious claim that dates from roughly 20 years ago.
But also consider this: We’ve now had over 24 hours for the J.J. Redick stories to start pouring out — tales of his racial prejudice that almost certainly exist if he’s willing to call a black woman the n-word to her face while he was a student at Duke University. Those tales could come from his school days, or from the six teams he’s played for, or from the networks he’s worked for, or anybody.
What do we have? For one, an old story where Redick got “tongue-tied” during a Chinese New Year greeting in 2018 for the league’s Chinese broadcaster and accidentally said what sounded like an offensive slur.
SB Nation dug deeper and found dubious stories about “leaked emails” to a girlfriend he allegedly pressured to have an abortion and which appeared on sub-Perez Hilton gossip websites that make TMZ look like National Review. Those emails have since been deleted from those sites, but may have contained racial slurs, we’re told (the woman in the case is black).
There’s also an odd story about Redick apparently witnessing a possible human trafficking incident in 2018 and briefly deleting his Twitter account afterward. Because, OK?
This, in other words, is the “pattern of behavior” we’re supposed to believe included J.J. Redick calling a black woman the n-word to her face. None of it has corroboration. All of it mostly exists in seamy corners of the internet where CNN or even TMZ don’t dare to tread.
There have been no new live allegations. Nobody backing Nash up. Nobody chiming in with similar stories. Nothing like that. Of the thousands of people Redick has professionally interacted with in a field that’s overwhelmingly black, this is all we have.
If real evidence is forthcoming and Redick is lying, then, by all means: Fire him. Without question. However, the militant atheist Christopher Hitchens had a famous quip about the supernatural which, while I find it lacking as an argument against the Deity, works well here:
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Very shaky evidence, very shaky assertion.
If Nash or the establishment media cannot find further evidence for this claim about Redick — and believe you me, certain elements in the latter entity are certainly trying — it’s already time to move on.
