JJ Redick’s Coaching Debut: What History Tells Us About Former Players as Coaches

JJ Redick is the newest head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, joining a fraternity that includes Hall of Fame coaches such as Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, and Rudy Tomjanovich. That’s a big step up for somebody whose only coaching experience came as the volunteer head coach of his son’s 4th grade basketball team. But the 15-year NBA veteran is not the first, and likely not the last, former player to take the reins of a team despite not having any professional coaching experience. To provide some insight into how this move might work out for the Lakers we took a look through NBA history to see how those coaches performed in their first season at the helm. We examined the difference in those team’s records from the season before the new coach’s hiring to their first season, as well as how player performances changed in that time.

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History Suggests The Lakers Will Finish With a Worse Record…

Prior to Redick’s hiring, 13 former players were hired as NBA head coaches without any prior pro coaching experience. Note, for the sake of our data we only included former players who coached the full season (i.e. no Magic Johnson with the Lakers) and had been named a head coach without ever having served as a full time coach (meaning Don Nelson’s 18 games as an assistant coach disqualified him as well). While the numbers are close, more of these coaches led their squad to a worse record than they had the year before.

Of the 13 coaches we examined, seven of them led their team to a lower winning percentage, leading the whole group to have a slightly worse average record in their first year. Of the six coaches that did lead their team to better records, they won an extra 10.8 games on average. The seven coaches who saw their team decline under their direction lost an average of 12.4 games more than the team had the previous season. Larry Bird improved his squad the most, leading the 1997-1998 Indiana Pacers to a 58-24 record after winning just 39 games the previous year. On the other end of the spectrum, Derek Fisher saw his team make the biggest swing in terms of final record, and not in a good way. Fisher led the 2014-2015 New York Knicks to a 17-65 record, 20 games worse than before he took over.

…But Their Players Will Perform Better

Despite generally seeing a step back in terms of final record, players tend to perform better on the court under former players.

Shooting percentage, assists, steals, and blocks all go up on average under former players. Rebounds are the only main statistic in which the numbers decreased under the coaches we examined. Even with boards though, our full data set shows that defensive rebounds do go up, albeit slightly, under these coaches. Offensive rebounds, however, drop off significantly, leading to the overall worsened rebound percentage.

Not only did these coaches lead their teams to higher total shooting percentages, but every shooting percentage went up. Two-pointers, three-pointers, and free throw percentages all increased. These teams also saw a 1.6% uptick in points scored. While they also gave up more points, their points against only increased by 0.7%, less than half of what the average points for increase is.

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