Duke Basketball Legend Gets Tossed From Son's Youth Game
Before Sunday, it had been over two years since Duke basketball treasure JJ Redick was ejected from a game. The last time, a result of throwing the ball in the direction of an official, came in February 2021 as a guard for the New Orleans Pelicans.
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This time, the 38-year-old coach of his 8-year-old son's youth basketball team got tossed for arguing with a ref.
Redick, Duke basketball's all-time leading scorer (2,769 points) who retired in 2021 following 15 years in the NBA and now regularly judges officiating as part of his job on ESPN's First Take, seems to view the incident as a badge of honor.
The sharpshooting legend brought up the story and joked about it on an episode of The Old Man & the Three podcast (warning: some profanity late in the tweeted video below), later tweeting, "I stand by my actions in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon."
So what happened? Well, it doesn't look like anyone captured it on camera, so the only available account is the one that JJ Redick gave to his highly entertained podcast guest, Jamal Crawford.
"It was a tightly contested contest," Redick explained. "And in the last four minutes, you can press. We were down one...A kid on the other team caught the ball, and he shuffled his feet and then got a running start, and then dribbled. And one of my kids had just been called for a travel, which I didn't think was a travel by the rule book."
Unsurprisingly, he also doesn't believe his reaction warranted the technical or ejection that ensued.
"I just said to the ref," Redick recounted, "'Are you seriously not gonna call that travel when you just called a travel on one of my kids?' And he T'ed me up for that. That's all I said. And as I was walking away, I just gave him my sarcastic [look]. And he tossed me for that."
Then Redick had to wait around for the game to end. After all, he served as his kid's ride home.
"So I go shake the kids' hands [after the game], shake the coaches' hands, and I go over to the referee," Redick said. "I'm like, 'Why did you throw me out? I didn't raise my voice to you. I didn't step to you.' And he said what he had to say, which I respect — whatever, it's all good.
"And then the other team comes over and starts taking pictures with me. So he realizes who I am at this point, and then he sees my coach later that day and says, 'Hey, will you tell JJ I'm sorry? I shouldn't have done that.'"
Special treatment was utterly unnecessary, though, in Redick's eyes.
"I'm just a dad," noted the ever-famous Blue Devil, whose No. 4 Duke basketball jersey number forever hangs from Cameron Indoor Stadium's rafters. "I'm not JJ Redick when I'm doing that.
"I'm just a dad coaching some 8- and 9-year-olds."
Quite passionately, apparently.
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