In recent years, former Wizards teammate Gilbert Arenas publicly called Brown a “drunk” and took several other shots at Brown personally. For Brown, he sees Arenas’ comments as part of the larger problems he views with the culture. “I don’t wanna talk about that guy, after he mentioned putting a pistol to my throat,” said Brown. “If I was white and the media was really the media and the police really did their job…See they expect us to talk like that…I’m not even going to play games talking about a cat like that. He’s definitely what’s wrong with our community, because he’s a coward. Because he knows there won’t be any ramifications for talking like that. Do you think Gilbert Arenas would say that about J.J. Redick?”
JJ Redick Rumors
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JJ Redick
Position: -
Born: 06/24/84
Height: 6-3 / 1.91
Weight:190 lbs. / 86.2 kg.
Earnings: $118,345,008 ($146,170,347*)
Born: 06/24/84
Height: 6-3 / 1.91
Weight:190 lbs. / 86.2 kg.
Earnings: $118,345,008 ($146,170,347*)
What made Redick ready to commit to a multiyear deal with ESPN this time? “It’s part of being a basketball player, where you look at a high school career in four years, you look at a college career in three or four years, you look at your time in the NBA [and] it’s all based on your contract. So you plan out your life based on, ‘I’m on a four-year deal, I’m on a three-year deal,’ whatever it may be. So I just naturally tend to look at things in three- to five-year blocks,” Redick said. “I’m really enjoying what I’m doing now. I knew I was going to commit to a long-term deal on the podcast … this summer. So it just felt like a very natural fit because of my enjoyment in doing ESPN and the opportunity to call more games.”
Redick loved playing on Christmas because it meant he was on a relevant team. “Playing on Christmas is a mark of significance, it’s a mark of validation, and it carries meaning,” he said. “As a team, as a city, as a franchise, as a player, it always meant something. “A Christmas Day game, you get there early. They usually put T-shirts out like it’s the playoffs. You know it’s going to be nationally broadcast. So … you got excited to play. Was it an inconvenience? Did you have to skip out on present time with your kids sometimes? Yeah, yeah, it was an inconvenience. But the significance of it and the relevance of it was always exciting to me.”
Despite losing family time, most players welcome the tradition, said ESPN analyst JJ Redick. They know these nationally televised games will generate NBA Playoff-like audiences. “Playing on Christmas is a mark of significance, it’s a mark of validation, and it carries meaning,” said Redick, who’ll call ESPN’s first game of the day with Ryan Ruocco and Cassidy Hubbarth. “As a team, as a city, as a franchise, as a player, it always meant something.”
For his part, Suns stud Mikal Bridges didn’t seem to mind the dunk too much. On a recent episode of The Old Man & The Three podcast, Bridges was asked by host JJ Redick to talk about what the latter labeled as “fake rage” from the Suns after seeing Williamson dunk the ball with the clock running out. According to Bridges, he didn’t see anything wrong with what the Pelicans superstar did: “Nah. No. I think for me, personally, hell no,” Bridges admitted. “S**t, I was the one that dunked that thing last year. I was T’d up. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m dunkin’ it.’”
Apparently, JJ Redick could have found himself helping to call the shots for the Boston Celtics. Having conversations with Derrick White on his ‘The Old Man And The Three’ podcast, the retired cager disclosed that he almost joined Joe Mazzulla’s staff, days after the young interim mentor had inherited the keys of the Celtics’ coaching upon Ime Udoka’s season-long suspension.
