Redick: Lakers want to play, ‘give people hope’

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick fought back tears Friday, grieving not only the loss of his family’s home — reduced to rubble from the Palisades Fire that remains active and has already burned more than 20,000 acres — but his entire community that was wiped out this week.

Redick’s wife, Chelsea, and their two sons, Knox and Kai, were one of the thousands of families evacuated from their home Tuesday afternoon in anticipation of the unprecedented fires that began to ravage L.A. while Redick was on the road with the Lakers, preparing for their game against the Dallas Mavericks.

The team’s flight back home after the Dallas loss arrived around 2 a.m. and the Lakers coach met his family at the hotel where they had relocated. After a few listless hours of sleep, he drove to the Pacific Palisades early Wednesday morning to check on the house he was renting as he searched for a more permanent home in his first year coaching the team.

“I was not prepared for what I saw,” Redick said. “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 [Palisades] 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.”

The Lakers game against the Charlotte Hornets, scheduled for Thursday, was postponed by the NBA. It will be rescheduled at a later date.

Redick and the Lakers gathered as a team for a light practice Friday, meeting for the first time since the fires in anticipation of hosting the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday — a game that Redick said he hopes will tip off as scheduled.

“We obviously are going to work with the NBA, the Spurs, the city and do what’s right,” Redick said. “I want to play tomorrow; I want to coach tomorrow. I want these guys to play tomorrow and if we can play, we’ll play.”

Lakers guard Austin Reaves said Rob Pelinka, the team’s vice president of basketball operations and general manager, informed the players about Redick’s situation through a group text message.

“Not just me, but this team loves him and cares about him and his family,” Reaves said of Redick. “He’s such a competitor, he comes into work every single day — especially today — and wants to do his job. And there’s a million other things he could be thinking about doing right now, but he’s dedicated to what he’s doing here and obviously dedicated to his family, I know he’s taking care of them.”

Redick opened up about some of the items that perished in the fire, family treasures accumulated through 18 years of marriage and 10 years of parenting.

“My son did an art project last year,” Redick said. “It was … a charcoal, pencil painting of a lighthouse that we had framed above the stairs. You can’t ever replace stuff like that.”

However, he emphasized how fortunate he feels, knowing that others will have a harder time rebuilding what was lost.

“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me and my family,” Redick said. “We’re going to be alright. 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 is down and out because of this.”

Redick might have become the face of tragedy for the Lakers’ organization, but he shared there are others within the team dealing with the unthinkable havoc the fires have caused. Among those affected are Dan Grigsby, the team’s chief legal officer, who lost his home in Pacific Palisades; Josh Green, the team’s general counsel, who lost his home and whose parents lost their home to the Palisades fire; and Rohan Ali, a team videographer, whose parents lost their home in Altadena.

Lakers players Anthony Davis and Jarred Vanderbilt both made significant charitable contributions to a GoFundMe set up to help Ali’s family.

Redick said it was a difficult decision for his family to leave Brooklyn, New York this summer and relocate to L.A. when he was considering the Lakers job, but that the connections they’ve made in Pacific Palisades eased that transition.

“The Palisades community has really just been so good to us,” Redick said. “I think that’s the part for us that we’re really struggling with is just the loss of community. And I recognize that people make up 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.”

Redick said that the Lakers getting back on the court, in some small way, can help the L.A. community at large find some normalcy after a hellacious week.

“We obviously want to give people hope and we want to give, I don’t want to say a distraction, maybe an escape,” Redick said. “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.”