JJ Redick is a veteran in the NBA and a well-respected one at that. He has also been a journeyman over the last few years as has bounced from team to team. For instance, it wasn’t so long ago that Redick was with the Philadelphia 76ers, before heading to the New Orleans Pelicans. Now, Redick is on the Dallas Mavericks, as the Pelicans dealt him to Dallas in the middle of the trade deadline.
On his podcast recently, Redick spoke about the trade and how it actually angered him. As the story goes, Redick wanted a trade out of New Orleans and even asked the team to send him closer to Brooklyn so that he could see his family. At one point, Redick even thought he might be bought out, which would allow him to go wherever he wants. Instead, the team sent him further from his family, and as you can see below, Redick was not pleased.
“I don’t think you’re going to get honesty from that front office, objectively speaking,” Redick said. “That’s not an opinion, I just don’t think you’re gonna get that. I don’t think what happened with me is necessarily an isolated incident. I think front offices around the league operate in their best interest. I get that. I understand that. Truthfully… I think I was a little naive thinking I was in Year 15 and I attempted to do things right throughout my career. But in terms of this front office, yeah, it’s not something where I would expect certainly the agents who worked on this with me to ever trust that front office again.”
The NBA can be an incredibly harsh business and most of the time, teams don’t care about the interests of the player. Despite the NBA being a player-driven league, not everyone is able to get what they want, and Redick certainly found that out the hard way.
