‘JJ for president’: How Redick became LeBron and the NBA’s favorite pundit

JJ Redick’s emergence as a rising star for ESPN since joining the network as a basketball analyst in October has been one of the more notable stories in US sports media over the past year.

The 37-year-old Redick, who launched a popular podcast while he was still a player, spent 15 seasons in the NBA after a decorated four-year stint at Duke, where he was the consensus national college basketball player of the year in 2006. He’s brought the keen insight and deep knowledge of an ex-pro to the broadcasting booth, but it’s been his regular appearances on ESPN’s breakfast-time debate show First Take that have made the biggest splash.

There’s nothing extraordinary about Redick’s sober, rational analysis except as an antidote for the incentivized buffoonery of the sports-shouting programs that ESPN has made the cornerstone of its daytime programming since the mid-aughts. And the contrast that his presence creates between the old-school talking head and the newer, fresher type of pundit was on full display this week during one memorable exchange that has since gone viral.

The gasbag of the scene is Chris Russo, a longtime New York sports-talk radio shock jock known as Mad Dog (yes, really) who began making weekly appearances on First Take this year. Above a chyron posing the question “Problem with how Draymond has carried himself?”, Russo groused over Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green’s ejection from Game 1 of the Western Conference semi-finals against the Grizzlies for a flagrant-two foul and his subsequent flipping-off of the Memphis crowd after he was bloodied by an elbow to the face during Game 2.

“He’s hard to root for,” Russo said. “Just shut up and play, will you please? America is tired of Draymond Green. I