JJ Redick is a legendary NBA journeyman who’s played for six NBA teams so far in his career. Originally from Roanoke, Va., Redick was a high school player renowned for his fundamentals and ability to shoot the ball. Long before the days of viral Instagram and YouTube videos, Redick gained national attention in high school for playing an Amateur Athletic Union game against one of the other top recruits, Dwyane Wade. Redick left high school a McDonald’s All American and took his talents to Duke University, where he played for four years and was a captain for two. Redick entered the NBA draft in 2006 and was viewed as one of the most polished and well-rounded guards available. That reputation made him a lottery pick, as the Orlando Magic selected him with the 11th overall pick.
Fast forward roughly 10 years, Redick is one of the most respected NBA players and he’s helped lead the Los Angeles Clippers in several playoff runs. During this time, he founded his first podcast in conjunction with Yahoo Sports, and at the time, this podcast was the first of its kind run by an active professional athlete. Redick received a good deal of criticism at the start, as many pundits and former athletes questioned how committed he was to his full-time job of being an NBA player. To combat this, Redick released a statement during his first episode stating that the show would never come before basketball, sticking to his word by putting up close-to-career numbers on the court. The show ran for one season under Yahoo, after which Redick took the concept and began to work under The Ringer Podcast Network, a media company started by Bill Simmons. Redick had a great run working with The Ringer and amassed hundreds of thousands of followers and subscribers on several social media platforms.
Over the past four years or so of running his podcast and interviewing people from NBA stars to presidential candidates, Redick fell in love with podcasting as a creative medium but felt that his endeavors were always somewhat lacking from the business end. He began to realize during the early months of 2020 that he didn’t own the most valuable assets of his show, the concept and the intellectual property behind the show. This led Redick to leave The Ringer at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and start his podcast network. The network was named ThreeFourTwo Productions, and it began making shows along with its production partner Cadence13, at the beginning of the NBA bubble. Redick kept his show, naming it “Old Man and the Three,” as the flagship program of the network. He has also signed Duncan Robinson, another NBA player known for his shooting, to his network. Duncan hosts a podcast that also interviews many NBA players, mainly focusing on their journeys to the league, as Robinson himself had a very unconventional path to the NBA. In the end, however, Redick stresses that his first love, shooting a ball through a hoop, will be his top passion and priority as long as he’s still playing.
Catch the interview on which this article is based on the Game Plan Podcast!
