EL SEGUNDO — Lakers coach JJ Redick wasn’t prepared for what he saw when returned to his home in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday morning after the team’s two-game trip in Texas.
Redick’s rental home in Pacific Palisades was one of the structures lost to the Palisades fire, which started around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday – while Redick and the team were still in Dallas ahead of their loss to the Mavericks later that evening.
The first-year coach said ahead of Tuesday’s game that his family was among several who had to evacuate their homes that day in light of the wildfires that spread throughout Los Angeles County. Redick’s wife, Chelsea, who was in the Mid-City area around the time the fires started, immediately rushed home to pick up the family’s nanny and their kids, Knox and Kai, from school as Redick searched from afar for hotels for his family to stay in.
Redick didn’t get back to the Los Angeles area until around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, then met his family at the hotel where they had relocated. But once he woke up, still wearing his black coach’s uniform from the previous night, he drove to Pacific Palisades to see the state of his home and community
“I just kind of had to see it for myself,” an emotional Redick said after Friday’s practice.
What he saw – his home and local community destroyed – was worse than what he could have imagined.
“And I was not prepared,” Redick said as part of an emotional seven-minute opening statement on Friday. “I was not prepared for what I saw. It is, it’s … it’s complete devastation and destruction. I had to go a kind of a different way to the house, but I went through most of the village and it’s all gone. And I don’t think you can ever prepare yourself for something like that. Our home, our home is gone. Everything we owned that was of any importance to us, almost 20 years together as a couple and 10 years of parenting was in that house. And there’s certain things that you can’t replace, that will never be replaced.”
Redick continued: “The material stuff is whatever. My family and I were processing the self side, the individual side of losing your home, and you don’t ever want to wish that on anybody. It’s an awful feeling to lose your home. What has happened over the last 72 hours from me being up there and from having a number of people that had homes in the Palisades that are also staying at the hotel, you really get a sense of just the communal destruction. And I got back to the hotel and of course my wife and I are emotional. I’m not sure I’ve wept or wailed like that in several years.”
Redick became more visibly emotional, with tears starting to form in his eyes, as he started to talk about the conversation between him and Chelsea about the Pacific Palisades community.
“She said to me, ‘I was very hesitant to move out here. I was very hesitant for you to go into coaching. I’ve never loved living somewhere more than I’ve loved Brooklyn, and I’ve never loved the community more than I love the community I’ve had in Brooklyn’,” Redick recalled. “And then we move out here and the Palisades community has really just been so good to us. That’s the part for us that we’re really struggling with is just the loss of community. I recognize that people make up [a] community, and we’re going to rebuild and we want to help lead on that. But all the churches, the schools, the library, like it’s all gone.”
The community’s recreation center had a special place in Redick’s and his family’s hearts since they first visited.
“The day we visited the house and decided we wanted to live in the house, we’re like, let’s go explore the village,” Redick said. “And we stumbled upon the rec center and there was some summer rec league basketball games going on. One kid, Milo, was playing. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s pretty good.’ He ended up being one of our neighbors; they lost their home. The rec center was like this place we were at every day. I mean, flag football, basketball, the playground, baseball, tennis courts. And everyone we knew was there every day. It just hurts to lose that.”
The Palisades Fire, which is already the most destructive in Los Angeles history, had destroyed more than 20,000 acres in Pacific Palisades and Malibu by Friday afternoon. The Eaton fire had grown to nearly 14,000 acres by Friday morning.
“For our family, we’re as committed as ever to Los Angeles,” Redick said. “We recognize, like it’s not just our community that has been impacted by this. There’s people in Malibu, there’s people in Brentwood, there’s people up in the valley, there’s people in Pasadena … it’s all over L.A. And if there’s anything we can do to help and lead, we will. It’s still pretty fresh, but we’re committed to helping other people as much as we can. And we’re going to do that. And we recognize that it’s going to be a long process.”
Redick emphasized how fortunate he feels, knowing others will have a more difficult time rebuilding what was lost.
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me and my family,” he said. “We’re gonna be all right. There are people that, because of some political issues and some insurance issues, are not going to be alright. And we’re going to do everything we can to help anybody who’s down and out because of this.”
For Redick, being around his team and on the practice court on Friday gave him “something to look forward to.” The Lakers’ home game against the Charlotte Hornets scheduled for Thursday night was postponed because of the fires. The Lakers’ next scheduled game is Saturday night against the San Antonio Spurs at Crypto.com Arena.
“Being around the guys and coaching – and I told them this – we’re prepared for whatever tomorrow,” Redick said. “We obviously are going to work with the NBA, the Spurs, the city and do what’s right. I want to play [on Saturday], I want to coach [on Saturday]. I want these guys to play and if we can play, we’ll play. I do believe for everybody, for everybody that has been impacted by this, there is a grieving process. There’s a healing process. I can only speak for myself, part of my healing and grieving process is being here with these guys and coaching basketball.”
“We obviously want to give people hope and we want to give, I don’t want to say a distraction, maybe an escape. We talked about it as a group before practice. It is our responsibility – everybody in this building – to lead on this and to help people.”
SPURS AT LAKERS
When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM