J.J. Redick talks Clippers season, Duke’s early tournament exit and food

The Los Angeles Clippers are a perennial contender in the NBA’s Western Conference, and one staple of that talented roster over the last four years has been sharpshooting guard J.J. Redick. He joined the team as part of a three-team trade involving the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns during the 2013-14 season, and has since averaged 15.8 points per game for the Clippers while shooting nearly 44 percent from 3-point range.

This season, Redick is averaging 14.7 points per game with a 41 percent 3-point average as the Clippers battle through another tough Western Conference regular season slate. However, he recently suffered a high ankle sprain that kept him out of this past Sunday’s loss to the Sacramento Kings. He seems rather optimistic, though, that he will be back on the court soon as the regular season winds down.

“I’m day-to-day,” Redick told The Step Back. “It feels a little better today [Monday]. I hadn’t missed a game since I think right before Christmas, so I was very frustrated I couldn’t play on Sunday, but I’m expected to be back this week.”

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Redick and the Clippers have seven games left on their 2016-17 regular season schedule, a season that has seen this squad deal with ups and downs. Although they have clinched a spot in the NBA Playoffs once again, inconsistency has definitely been a concern.

“It’s been a very inconsistent season, and inconsistency can lead to frustration,” Redick told The Step Back. “Given the injuries that we’ve had and some bouts of inconsistency, to a person in our locker room, we believe in the potential of this team. It doesn’t take a lot to get it right. A lot of times it can be one game, or two games, or three games where something just clicks and I think that’s our goal the last seven games, to be in a great spot heading into the playoffs.”

When you talk about the NBA Playoffs and the Western Conference, of course all eyes turn to the juggernaut that is the Golden State Warriors. Currently, the 59-14 Warriors hold a commanding 16-game lead over the Clippers in the Pacific Division, and in four meetings between the two teams this season, it’s been all Golden State.

With the possibility looming on the horizon that Redick and the Clippers could see the Warriors again this spring, this time for a seven-game series, it can be tough not to get caught looking ahead. Sometimes, though, you have to look back to the past for some reassurance.

“I think you can sometimes rely on past experiences, even if those experiences are well into the past,” Redick theorized. “We did beat them in a seven-game series back in 2014 in the first round and the core group on this team is the same for the most part.”

Still, this is a different Warriors team from that 2014 unit, mainly with the addition of one of the best players in the league last summer.

“Of course, though, they’ve added a top-3 player in the NBA in Kevin Durant,” acknowledged Redick. They’ve had our number in the regular season for the last two years now, and it’s been a point of frustration for us for sure. But if we end up playing them or it even looks like we have the chance of playing them in the playoffs, we’ll expect to win; there’s no alternative to that. You don’t go into a series expecting to lose or expecting to get your butts kicked, you’re expecting to win.”

One thing the Clippers won’t be able to rely on in a do-or-die situation in the playoffs is the free throw shooting of DeAndre Jordan. While one of the most dominant big men in the NBA today, seemingly everyone, be it fans or television personalities, likes to have a little fun at the expense of Jordan’s porous efforts from the line. So do Redick and the Clippers give him a little razzing about it from time to time?

“I’ve been trying to get him to shoot right-handed for three years now,” Redick admitted. “Everything that he does is right-handed. He finishes around the basket right-handed and he even jumps off his left foot which is something that right-handed people do as well. But he insists on shooting left-handed, which doesn’t make any logical sense.”

“I think DJ, though, has been pretty stellar the last few weeks, shooting around 65 percent,” Redick continued. “From a teammate’s point of view, the guy works on his free throw shooting every day. He’s worked with coaches, he’s done everything he can to correct that. Sometimes big guys just have a hard time shooting free throws. I don’t know of it’s just the size of their hands or the oxygen up there … I dunno. They just have a hard time shooting free throws.

Redick has been in the NBA for 11 years now, but he was a well-known commodity in the basketball world before joining the NBA, as one of the more polarizing players to ever come out of the Duke program (which really says something).

This past season his Blue Devils had all the hype in the world, but recently were stunned with a second-round exit from the NCAA Tournament at the hands of the Final Four-bound South Carolina Gamecocks. This being the Duke program in general, some have wondered whether the season could be considered a failure with the absence of a national title.

“I think the expectation for a lot of Duke teams is a championship or the season is a failure,” Redick said. “This year, because of the preseason expectations, I think a lot of people would look at this as a down year, but we were a 2-seed in the tournament, we beat UNC twice and we won the ACC Tournament. We would like to be in UNC’s position right now and not home, but I don’t think the season was a failure.”

“It’s hard to win sometimes with freshmen,” Redick continued” Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] was fortunate enough to do it in 2015 with [Jahlil] Okafor, Tyus Jones and Justise Winslow. This team this year seemed to be playing hot at the right time, but they just ran into a buzzsaw in South Carolina.”

With that early Duke loss in the NCAA Tournament, another controversial season came to a close for junior guard Grayson Allen. Allen is not the most well-liked member of the Blue Devils roster, to put it extremely lightly, which is something Redick can relate to.

“I think when you make a mistake at Duke, it gets amplified a bit more because it’s Duke,” Redick said. “Good or bad, I think that’s the truth. I don’t think there’s many programs that have that level of attention — maybe UNC. Although, I said the other day, UNC had this crazy academic scandal and no one talks about it, but we still wanna talk about Grayson tripping people from two years ago; it seems kinda silly to me. He made a couple mistakes and I think he’s done a great job of owning up to those. But I always say, when you’re a freshman or sophomore and you’re 18-19 years old, people are yelling things at you and you don’t know how to deal with it. You’re not mature enough to handle certain things. With experience comes maturity, and I think Grayson has matured a lot in the last three years and he’s in a really good place now.”

Some may indeed look at this past Duke season as a failure. But there’s simply no denying that there was a load of talent on that roster, talent that has the potential to make a mark on the NBA sooner rather than later as they join their fellow Duke alum in the professional ranks.

“Well, [Jayson] Tatum has the chance to be a real special player,” Redick noted. “I think he’s polished enough where he can step right in and play some heavy minutes. I would expect him to be a top 5-6 pick, and I think he’s got All-Star potential. He’s probably my first choice.

“They have a lot of guys who I expect to have long careers in the NBA,” he continued. “As a lot of Duke guys have proven over the last 10 years or so, it’s sometimes the guys you don’t expect to have long careers. If you would have told me seven years ago that Lance Thomas would have the career that he’s had, I probably wouldn’t believe you. But I believe he just signed a four-year deal with the Knicks last summer, so he’ll be pushing up against 10 years in the NBA. We’ve had a lot of guys that over the last 10 years or so that are just really hard playing and love the game and love to work.”

“Then of course we have guys like Kyrie Irving who’s just an All-Star, a world champion and an Olympic champion. I sort of think Tatum fits that bill. There’s some guys on this current Duke team that I would expect to have long careers in the NBA. Grayson and Luke [Kennard] are two of those guys, and of course the big guys, Marques [Bolden] and [Harry] Giles are gonna be players as well.”

Off the court, Redick is also known for one specific hobby — food. The Clippers guard is a known “foodie.” So now that he has had a total of three NBA stops, what were his favorite establishments and dishes in Orlando and Milwaukee, and what’s his favorite in Los Angeles currently?

“Wow, good question,” Redick said. “Okay, so LA is really hard. LA is like one of the best food cities in the country for me for sure. For LA, I would say my favorite place is this little place in Santa Monica called Giorgio Baldi’s. It would probably be my last meal. It’s an only Italian family place, and I get the same thing every time — fish carpaccio with truffle sauce.”

“Now Milwaukee … Milwaukee is one of the most underrated NBA food stops,” Redick gushed. “It has amazing restaurants. My wife and I, we didn’t have kids then, so we had a lot of fun exploring the city in the two-and-a-half months that I was there. I think the best restaurant was Wolf Peach, that’s my favorite one there. And the Bone Marrow appetizer was the best thing on the menu.

“Then in Orlando, I’m gonna have to say Ravenous Pig, it’s a little gastro pub in Winter Park. My favorite dish there was definitely the farmer’s salad. One of the other things my wife and I got all the time was the steak frites. They had this little house sauce that came with them that was so insanely good. So those would be my two favorite things from that menu. ”

Another off-the-court venture that Redick wanted to give some information about is the work he’s currently doing with Dove Men+Care.

“I’m really excited to partner with Dove Men+Care to celebrate the fans and their impact on the game,” Redick said. “My goal is to raise awareness real strength manifesto that Dove created. You can go online, you can read the manifesto and sign it. We’ve had a lot of great people in the industry like Jim Calhoun, Alonzo Mourning, Ray Allen and a teammate of mine Paul Pierce that have signed it and given their support. The manifesto is about celebrating our passion and care for the game and how we’re all a part of something bigger than ourselves as it relates to the game.”

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The Clippers return to the court to begin the seven-game stretch to end the season on Wednesday night against the Washington Wizards, hopefully with Redick on the court and healthy.