Anthony Irwin, Lakers Daily Insider

Hey Anthony, how are you man?

I'm doing great, I'm doing great. Thank you very much for having me. Well thank you for taking the time to hop on amongst all of the news surrounding the Boston Celtics winning the championship. You dropped some news earlier today about the Lakers.

What's going on with Redick and his team? Yeah, so basically this morning I noticed that Redick wasn't on first take. Normally you would think that ESPN would want one of their kind of foremost basketball voices on their kind of marquee show. And so when I saw that he wasn't on first take, I started asking around to ask, you know, I already had a pretty good feeling that this news was going to be coming at some point this week. Then when I saw that he wasn't on the air this morning, especially seeing as the finals just wrapped up in Boston, just up the road from Bristol, Connecticut. I started asking, alright, well this feels like a pretty key development here.

He would normally be on the air here. And was kind of given the run around and stuff. And then, I don't know if you saw it, but Jay Williams basically kind of like accidentally announced it on get up as well. And I saw that clip across my timeline. So then I started asking directly the people that I've been talking to throughout this process who are close to the Lakers, who obviously can't speak or have to speak anonymously.

I just started saying straight up, alright, stop, stop giving me the run around. I've been told that the Lakers are getting ready to hire JJ Redeker, that he is the guy and was called by multiple sources that, yes, that is the direction that this is heading. They are working on an agreement and the announcement is very imminent. Anthony Irwin is joining us, Lakers Insider, host of the Lakers Lounge for Odyssey Sports.

We actually talked about this earlier in the show. The Boston Celtics are scheduled to have their parade on Friday up in Boston. You say imminent. Is this imminent as in tomorrow, Thursday? Are they going to have to wait until next week? They want to run into the draft?

What are your thoughts? They need to get this done ASAP because of the draft. Because of this upcoming offseason that they have, you have LeBron James' player option that he is making his decision on and how well they are organized heading into the offseason I think is going to play a role in that. The Lakers have the 17th pick in this year's draft. Last year they kind of messed up the draft in the type of fashion that is not to be expected with this organization. Normally they are very good in the draft. They have found plenty of guys and plenty of talent up and down the draft. Last year they drafted Jalen Hochafino. He dealt with some injuries right after he was drafted. You had Jaime Jaquez drafted. You had Pods from up in Golden State drafted.

And you had Cam Whitmore also drafted after the Lakers drafted. So they swung and missed. That doesn't happen very often. They can't afford to do that again. They want a head coach in place to be able to have those conversations with. I'm told that there was that report that there are some people within the organization who are okay with that not being settled heading into the draft.

That is just not how a productive organization operates. So I'm under the impression that they want this done as soon as possible and I legitimately don't know why this wasn't done and finalized today. It has me asking new questions to the same people that confirmed that it was JJ earlier this morning. Anthony Irwin is here with us, Lakers insider. What is the consensus right now by Laker fans? Given the fact that Dan Hurley came in and said no thanks, knowing that JJ Redick has no head coaching experience, what is I guess closest to consensus by Laker fans as to what's going on? Yeah, Lakers fans I think are just kind of tired at this point.

The only bright spot in the LeBron James era was a championship that they were never able to get together and celebrate because of COVID. And everything basically before and since then has been mostly mediocrity and I think Lakers fans at this point are just waiting for the organization to figure things out and try to show that they operate on the level that is expected of the Los Angeles Lakers. And they are now on, while Rob Lincoln has been making these decisions, he has had to fire Luke Walton, he had to, he fired Frank Vogel and then he just fired Darvin Ham and now he's getting ready to potentially hire a podcaster for their next head coach who has zero coaching experience in the NBA. And I think just generally speaking, Lakers fans are just kind of looking at this organization that has provided them with a whole bunch of success. Like, what is the deal?

Where is this organization? Where is the exceptionalism and those exceptional expectations that got the Lakers to the point where they have been? To where, you know, for a long time you knew that the Lakers were always going to at least be in the playoffs and they were always going to be vying for a championship and you could always feel like they were among the higher operating franchises in the NBA and you just can't quite say that about them right now.

Anthony, final question for you. You take a look at these Los Angeles Lakers. Good chance that we see both LeBron and Brony on the team next year?

Yeah, I would say so. Rich Paul and Clutchports have been doing a lot of work to basically shoe off all other teams. They have been pretty open to the Phoenix Suns, which kind of strikes me as somewhat interesting, but I would be pretty confident in saying that Brony will be taken by the Lakers, whether it's early-ish in the second round. The Lakers always buy a draft pick early on in the second round. Maybe that's when they go up and they take them then.

Or, at the very least, they take them at 55 having done the work that Clutch needs to do and that the Lakers need to do to kind of guarantee that Brony will get to play with LeBron next year. Anthony, always keeping busy in Los Angeles. What's the next crazy story besides the Coach and Brony? Are they going to run out of stories, man? What's next?

The Lakers absolutely refuse to be normal. It's always going to be something. No matter what it is, they're going to keep us on our toes and they're going to provide plenty of stuff for everybody who either loves the Lakers or hates the Lakers or just likes talking about the Lakers. They're very good at providing us stuff to talk about. Most definitely.

They will keep you busy. Anthony, please fill us in on where people can follow you and all your news. You can follow me on Twitter at AnthonyOrwinLA and you can find the show, the Lakers Lounge, everywhere that you get your podcasts and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Lakers Lounge. Anthony, thank you so much and let's see if that J.J. Redick news drops over the next 48 hours. Thank you, man. Thank you. Anytime.