One of the songs is called Dodger Blue and it is amazing.
Kendrick Lamar released a surprise album, GNX, and in the process was able to delight his fans around the world.
The project, which includes 12 new songs and did not have any promotional material leading up to its release, is his his sixth studio album. It includes a lot of what music fans can expect from the rapper, including some incredible beats and compelling lyrics as well.
Some of those songs include references to the likes of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, John Madden, local high schools in Los Angeles, and his upcoming Super Bowl Bowl performance.
It also has a song called “Dodger Blue” that is, obviously, a shout out to the World Series champions.
With the help of Genius, we looked at a few of the best athlete mentions on this surprise drop.
Track 1: wacced out
“Won the Super Bowl and Nas the only one congratulated me”
Track 5: hey now
“If they talkin’ ’bout playin’ ball, they can take it up with Jordan
It’s bald heads and the heckling for all endorsements”
Track 8: dodger blue
“What school you went to? God didn’t have Compton
Westchester, King Drew, do we function’?”
Track 9: peekaboo
“Peekaboo, eighty pointers like a Kobe game”
Track 10: heart pt. 6
“Punch played Phil Jackson in my early practices”
Track 11: gnx
“I’m in the field for real, UCLA Bruins”
Track 12: gloria
“Preoccupied playin’ John Madden and bull [expletive]”
Redick was the Lakers’ choice after an offseason that saw them pursue and fail to land Connecticut head coach Dan Hurley. Redick was an early option to replace Darvin Ham, who was replaced after the Lakers got bounced from the NBA playoffs by the Denver Nuggets for a second consecutive season.
Redick could not interview and meet with Lakers brass as he was an analyst for the NBA Finals. It wasn’t until after the Boston Celtics’ 4-1 win over the Dallas Mavericks that the Lakers could sit down and get into the fine details with Redick.
Redick connected with Lakers Vice President of Basketball Operations and General Manager Rob Pelinka, and if this hiring pans out, that relationship will be meaningful in the future.
“It was very evident that he had a unique perspective and philosophy on basketball and how it’s to be taught,” Pelinka said at the introductory press conference.
Pelinka also reiterated that he and Redick share “a basketball philosophy that was very similar, and it was based on high-level strategy, it was based on a certain way of communicating with players and teaching them,” in addition to “prioritizing player development.”
With things official, what’s next for Redick as he prepares for his first season as a professional basketball coach?
Picking a staff and preparing for the NBA draft, plus NBA free agency, are the big ones for Redick.
Where does Redick get a coaching staff when he is not a coach with prior coaching connections? There have been murmurs that the Lakers and Redick are united on the notion that Redick’s assistants are fellow high-IQ minds like himself mixed with multiple former coaches with head coaching experience. That would be of real value to Redick, who doesn’t know what it takes yet to handle a locker room, especially in a locker room led by LeBron James.
Roster construction matters more than ever, and for the Lakers, it matters even more because they don’t have the financial wiggle room to be free spenders. They’ll have even less once we consider their plan to offer what would likely be LeBron James’ final contract as a Laker.
James has until June 29 to opt into the final year of his current contract, which would pay him $51.4M for the upcoming 2024-2025 season, but the expectation is that he’ll forgo that player option and become a free agent. Any new deal would only have a three-year max because James is 39, and the NBA employs an over-38 rule that stipulates that no player over that age can sign for more than three years.
Assuming LeBron returns to LA at his age, he can’t be the focal point anymore. Redick should look to building the roster around star forward Anthony Davis more. He discussed that in the conference when referring to Davis and how he planned to use him.
“One of the things I brought up with him is just the idea of him as a hub,” Redick said. “There’s a bunch of guys at the five position in the NBA that operate that way. I don’t know that he’s been used that way and maximized all his abilities.”
With that said, shooting, wing defense, and competent depth down low to take some of the load off Anthony Davis nightly were significant holes in the Lakers last year. The Lakers have a first-round pick in the upcoming 2024 NBA Draft, where they pick 17th. College Sports Wire’s Andy Patton mocked a player from a familiar school to the Lakers in Wednesday’s opening round.
Patton mocked Kyle Filipowski from Duke University for LA’s first-round pick. Filipowski has the size and skill to be a floor-spacing big that the Lakers could slot in and around Anthony Davis. He can handle the ball, as we’ve seen for Duke, and he has a wide array of offensive skills that complement Davis.
The Lakers’ new head coach and Pelinka, his new boss, both spent a significant amount of time harping on player development and how that would guide LA in the short and long term. Redick riffed about communicating with players already under contract about how they can improve and how they will function in his offensive and defensive system. For Redick, he spent his college years playing under one of the most outstanding teachers ever to grace the game of basketball, Coach K.
If this new venture is to work for Redick, it’ll have to be in the hands to create a culture and mentality in LA. This is something that has been missing for the Purple and Gold since the days of Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson.
“The pursuit of greatness can’t be miserable,” Redick said. “Every day somebody walks into this building, they have to enjoy it. I think part of being a coach, right, is, like, ‘Can I maximize each player?’ That helps maximize the group. And does everybody in the building, not just the players and staff, does everybody in the building enjoy coming to work every day? That’s sort of on me to create that culture.”
Even after doing so much to build the Lakers into the gold standard of basketball, Jerry West wasn’t treated well by owner Jeanie Buss.
Plenty of Los Angeles Lakers fans have lamented the fact that, in recent years, their beloved franchise has resembled a soap opera more than a legitimate championship-caliber operation.
Ever since former owner Dr. Jerry Buss died in 2013, his daughter Jeanie has assumed control of the team. Jeanie Buss’ brother Jim was put in charge of basketball operations, but he was seen as incompetent in that role, and the two didn’t exactly seem to get along.
Then there was Jeanie Buss’ romantic relationship with Phil Jackson, who coached the Lakers from 1999 to 2004, then returned for six more seasons in 2005 after taking a one-year sabbatical. While that relationship may have been sincere, it rubbed some in the organization the wrong way.
The late Jerry West, who was an executive for the team from 1982 to 2000, was one of those who didn’t approve of the relationship between Jeanie Buss and Jackson. According to one report, she responded by essentially dislodging West from the organization.
“After Jerry Buss died, Jeanie Buss inherited the team and wholly excommunicated Jerry West from the franchise, even taking his season tickets,” Strauss notes. “According to sources, the bitterness started back when West was critical of Jeanie Buss’ relationship with then Laker coach Phil Jackson. Phil won that particular battle, and ultimately the power struggle with West.”
West is often credited with helping to transform the Lakers from a bridesmaid franchise to the gold standard of basketball. During his Hall of Fame playing career in the 1960s and early 1970s, they reached the NBA Finals nine times, only to lose there eight times. But once he took over as general manager in 1982, he made the shrewd moves that turned Showtime from a great team that won two world championships in three years to arguably the greatest NBA team ever.
He went on to work for the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors after leaving the Lakers in 2000. Once he left the Warriors in 2017, he wanted to return to the Lakers, but the team turned him down.
Two years ago, West expressed frustration about his fractured relationship with the Lakers in an interview with The Athletic.
“One disappointing thing (about my career) is that my relationship with the Lakers is horrible,” West told The Athletic. “I still don’t know why. And at the end of the day, when I look back, I say, ‘Well, maybe I should have played somewhere else instead of with the Lakers, where someone would have at least appreciated how much you give, how much you cared.’”
It is unthinkable that he was treated the way he was after all he had done to build up the Lakers brand for decades. But unfortunately, that’s the way it turned out.
Looking back 25 years after Jordan’s final Championship
In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette tapes of my interviews from 35 years of writing about pro basketball. In there was a gem I had never listened to, from an April 1991 game between the Washington Bullets and the Lakers. Jerry Krause, the Bulls GM at the time, had worked for both organizations as a scout and now some years later had come to the game in Washington in a moment of immense pride, to quietly show off a bit and perhaps even gloat.
His Bulls were playing very well that spring and seemed on the brink doing great things.
A short, odd little fat guy—Michael Jordan had famously nicknamed him ‘Crumbs’ for the evidence of his snacks often found on his shirts—Krause had spent years suffering ridicule while knocking around as a scout in pro basketball, a business of very large men.
In the 1970s, Krause had finally reached what seemed like the pinnacle when he was named GM of the Bulls, only to be fired after a few weeks on the job.
Like that, he had gone from a crowning achievement to immense public ridicule. If it seemed everybody in his hometown Chicago was laughing at him, that’s only because they were.
Yet by 1985, the Bulls were something of a laughingstock themselves, and financial whiz Jerry Reinsdorf was able to buy them for a pittance, about $14 million.
Reinsdorf promptly stunned fans by hiring Krause to be his GM, and the short, little fat guy set about rebuilding the team.
This time Krause had a vision, albeit an odd one. He wanted to hire a retired college coach, Tex Winter, who had long been the proponent of a quirky offense, the triangle, or triple-post.
JEFF HAYNES/AFP via Getty Images
More important, Krause wanted to hire a young goofball named Phil Jackson as his head coach with the idea that Winter would mentor him to greatness.
It would take a while to get Jackson in place, in part because he had written a memoir about playing for the Knicks in which he talked about taking LSD on the beach in California after New York defeated the Lakers for the 1973 NBA title.
Nobody wanted to hire a coach who took LSD, but Krause paid the matter no mind. He had known Jackson for a decade and saw his odd genius.
Krause would also become excited about several players including a relatively obscure prospect out of Central Arkansas named Scottie Pippen.
The Bulls struggled for some time to overcome the Bad Boy Pistons, but in that late April 1991 Chicago finally seemed on the way to doing that.
Thus, Krause stood alone outside the Bullets locker room that night, seemingly waiting for reporters to notice him and interview him. I recall almost feeling sorry for him standing there and recorded about five minutes with him that night as Krause spoke grandly of his own work in assembling a team around the young superstar Jordan.
It was a conversation I had frankly forgotten until a quarter century later when it literally leapt out from that newly digitized archive.
Sure enough, Krause’s instincts had been spot on. It had all fallen in place for Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, Winter and their Bulls. They would win the ’91 championship, then five more over the next seven seasons.
Listening to that tape of Krause at the brink of their greatness and knowing how it would all go from that early moment of his eager pride to a bad end, how all the happy days would evaporate in 1998 in a very public and dramatic ugliness, I was struck with an overwhelming sadness.
I later did an extensive interview with Krause on the tenth anniversary in 2008 when he told me he had videotape of every game played in the championship years.
He had not viewed them even once, he told me with great bitterness.
AP Photo/Beth A. Keiser
THAT LAST DANCE
By that 1998 season, after so much success, the Bulls were caught in the throes of a non-sensical struggle for control of the team, with Jackson, Jordan and Pippen pitted against Krause, who announced before the season began that Jackson would not be allowed to return as coach in the fall of 1998.
“This is it,” Krause had said. “Phil and I know it. We all know it.”
In announcing his move, Krause did not identify exactly what had led to Jackson’s scheduled departure, but the relationship between the coach and GM had obviously turned from love and respect to hatred.
The son of two fundamentalist preachers, Phil Jackson had been heavily influenced by the “rapture” or the idea of the end times. Thus, he always seemed to think in terms of the “last” this or that. He had dubbed the showdown with Krause “the Last Dance.” Later, as coach of the Lakers he would write a book about his battles with Kobe Bryant and call it the “Last Season.”
It was a good name for the events in Chicago in 1998.
No matter where he played, the buildings virtually sparkled for Jordan that season. Each game, as he stepped onto the floor for introductions, he was greeted by the flashes of a thousand small cameras. The phenomenon was most brilliant at the United Center in Chicago, where the introductions would build to a crescendo of noise and light until Jordan’s name was called as the fifth starter, and the arena became a pulsating strobe. Later, at the opening tip, these same lights would again flicker furiously. But they were most maddening during free throws, when Jordan went to the line, and the rows of fans behind the basket would break into a dizzying twinkle, bringing to mind a mirror ball at a junior prom.
In one of our several one-on-one interviews that season, I asked Jordan how he could possibly shoot free throws under the conditions, he smiled and replied, “I got used to that a long time ago.”
He had always been a superstar who understood and accommodated his fans. That was particularly true that spring, as indications grew that it could well be his last. The camera lights were by far the warmest measure of his popularity. Each time he made a spectacular play, Michael Jordan’s world glittered, a twinkling firmament of adulation that served as a backdrop for his every move.
Despite all the trappings of the moment, my numerous conversations with Krause revealed that the GM was eager to end the Jordan era so that he could prove that he could rebuild the team without Jordan. I thought he was crazy.
I in turn went to Jordan to ask why they all couldn’t just sit down and talk out their differences. He replied that wouldn’t be possible because Krause had gotten in the way of winning too often.
I realized then that Jordan was confident he would defeat Krause just as he had overcome the entire NBA.
Jordan was wrong, of course. He did not understand just how badly Jackson wanted to get away from Krause, that the coach would “ride off into the sunset” at the end of the season.
Jordan also couldn’t fathom that Jerry Reinsdorf—who had realized hundreds of millions in wealth with the growth of the Bulls by then—didn’t want to give Pippen a large contract, even though the forward had been underpaid for years and had been a magnificent player for the team.
As it sadly unfolded, Jackson would leave, Pippen would be traded, Jordan would retire, and Krause would fail miserably in his attempts to rebuild the team and eventually be fired.
It would indeed prove to be the Last Dance for both Krause and Jordan.
I interviewed Krause extensively again in 2012. By then he had grown to accept everything that had come to pass.
“It’s past history,” he said. “It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”
In the mid-2000s, the Los Angeles Lakers were floundering after the departure of Shaquille O’Neal. They had the NBA’s top player, Kobe Bryant, but little else around him, and by 2007 it looked like there was no way for them to improve.
Bryant demanded a trade that summer, and it looked like the beginning of the end for the Lakers as millions had come to know them for decades.
Then came the miraculous Pau Gasol trade in February 2008. Suddenly, happy days were back again for the Purple and Gold and their fans.
Gasol was a seamless fit in head coach Phil Jackson’s triangle offense, and Jackson became an admirer of the big man’s game. However, the “Zen Master” had initial reservations about whether Gasol was what the Lakers needed to resurrect their dynasty.
“We had discussed the trade for Pau a season before. My reluctance was that he wasn’t a defensive center and protecting the lane was a priority. However, Andrew Bynum was an important member of the team and allowed Pau to play both positions when the Lakers won back-to-back titles. Pau’s ability to play both positions really made the Lakers a potent offensive team.”
As it turned out, Bynum provided the brawn and defense, while Gasol was the skilled, savvy and versatile second scorer L.A. needed alongside Bryant. Once the Spanish native arrived, the Lakers were suddenly back in the business of winning championships, and that winning got him inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
During his seven seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, Pau Gasol was a magnificent player, but he was sometimes underrated and underappreciated, even by his own team’s fans.
After he left the team in 2014, it sometimes seemed as if its fans had almost forgotten about him. But this past season, they showed their love for him when he got his No. 16 jersey retired during an emotional halftime ceremony.
Days from now, Gasol will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s something that likely wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been traded to the Lakers.
Then-Lakers head coach Phil Jackson played a big role in unlocking his potential. Gasol recently opened up about how much the “Zen Master” meant and still means to him.
“Phil is so unique in a way that he is. He’s known to figure out a way to get the best out of his players, understand how he can poke them and motivate them and see what’s too far, what’s too little and he can fine-tune that,” he said. “Loved how spiritual and intellectual he is. I love his whole demeanor, really. Even though sometimes he can get under your skin and he would do that purposely. He would get a kick out of it. It’s just how he was, how he is.
“But I loved continuing to see him over the years. And every time pretty much that I come to L.A., we find time to get together and have lunch and we talk and it’s great. I tell him I love him, I hug him. I’m trying to go visit him in Montana and spend some time in the mountains, but hopefully, we’ll make that happen soon. He was doing some work last year, didn’t happen. I go back in the summers to Spain, most of the time, so it’s hard during that summertime where Montana is blossoming I guess. But I still don’t I don’t mind. I won’t visit because of the weather, I want to spend time with him. That’s really what I care about. So it’s been great.”
When Gasol arrived in L.A. midway through the 2007-08 season, he seamlessly fit into Jackson’s triangle offense and picked it up very quickly. The Lakers, who had been mediocre for the past few years, instantly became contenders, and Gasol and Kobe Bryant led them to three straight NBA Finals appearances and back-to-back world titles.
Former Lakers forward Robert Horry told a story of how Phil Jackson got his team to bond into a championship unit by having a fun night out.
In the late 1990s, the Los Angeles Lakers were one of the most talented teams in the NBA. With Shaquille O’Neal in his physical prime, potent guards Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones and a budding teenager named Kobe Bryant, they seemed to be on the edge of greatness.
But they were swept out of the playoffs in 1998 and 1999, and it was clear they lacked something. So in June 1999, they hired Phil Jackson to be their head coach, hoping his mystical flower power and experience coaching the dynastic Chicago Bulls of the 1990s would be the missing ingredients.
He definitely changed the team’s culture. The 1999-2000 Lakers surprised everyone by winning 31 of their first 36 games. But they still had some growing to do before they could call themselves world champions, both on and off the court.
Robert Horry, a veteran forward on that team, recalled how Jackson got the team to bond by taking them out as a group to see a popular and hilarious stand-up comedian.
“You got to like each other. You got to like each other, man, and I think I’ve never played it … like we would all go to dinners. I think when even when we was the Lakers we weren’t really a cohesive group. And Phil, one time Phil said, ‘Alright, nobody making plans we all getting on the bus’ because he knows when we make plans we on the road you get to the hotel, we got limos, we all in a limo, we gone. He said, ‘nobody make plans.’ He made us all go to a comedy club. We went in through the back doors, probably like this and we’re like, ‘Where the (expletive) we at,’ right? This is the first time I ever seen Fluffy (Gabriel Iglesias). He was funny as (expletive). We all laughed.
“And then from that moment on, we started doing a lot more things as a team. And it’s amazing how we would come, ‘Oh yeah, we friends, we good’ but we weren’t that close. And from that moment on, we became closer.”
One thing Jackson was known for doing was helping his players grow as men and not just basketball players. He would sometimes organize group activities to get his players to develop a unanimity that would translate to game action.
After a rough patch in January and early February, those Lakers started to come together, winning 19 games in a row. They then got through the Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers and Indiana Pacers in the playoffs. Despite some drama versus Sacramento and Portland, they took home their first of three straight Larry O’Brien trophies.
While he might be a very good head coach of the NBA’s most storied franchise, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has a very long way to go to make the list of the best coaches to ever tote a clipboard in front of Boston’s bench, never mind across the other 29 teams of the Association.
Even the best head coaches of today’s game — with a single notable exception — would not make the cut of the greatest head coaches in NBA history according to Los Angeles Lakers legend Michael Cooper.
No, Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is not the exception Cooper was talking about.
Coop and the founder of the CLNS Media network, Nick Gelso, hashed out who those legendary head coaches are on the NBA G.O.A.T. list.
Two Celtics coaches and a former player who coached elsewhere make the list, but you will have to watch the clip embedded above to hear who else made Coop’s cut.
The NBA has been great. We’re in a true golden era of basketball with tons of talent in the league. I’d honestly hate to be missing out on any of this if I’m a fan of the sport at all.
Apparently, though, none of that moves Phil Jackson. The Hall of Fame head coach said he hasn’t watched a lick of NBA basketball since the league hit the Bubble back in 2020.
Why? Because, apparently, the social justice slogans on the court left a bad taste in his mouth. He said as much on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast.
Phil Jackson says he hasn’t watched the NBA since the Bubble:
“They even had slogans on the floor and the baseline. It was trying… to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn't know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.” pic.twitter.com/njYUCnL45p
“The game had slogans on the floor and the baseline. It was trying…to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.”
You might be curious as to what the “slogans” Jackson is talking about were. It was just Black Lives Matter — the slogans the NBA decided to put on the court following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
And that’s what is apparently stopping Jackson from watching NBA basketball these days. Black Lives Matter slogans that were on the court for a few months 3 years ago. Cool, I guess? Your loss, champ.
The further we get away from Jackson’s coaching career, the more we begin to learn about him as an actual person. One of his own former players has called him racist. And, well, let’s just say his point here isn’t helping him beat those allegations.
I’m not sure if Jackson is racist, but I am sure that this is dumb. There are lots of valid critiques one could make about the NBA over the last few years, but turning away from the league because it didn’t acquiesce to calls for escapism is just silly.
We were living in one of the most tender moments in American history. There was a slight uprising occurring in the midst of a global pandemic. An expectation of silence at that moment from a league where around 70% of the labor force is Black is just completely ridiculous and obtuse. Period.
But hey, man. Do your thing, Phil. We’ll just keep enjoying good basketball over here.
