After JJ Redick torched Doc Rivers on First Take, his NBA on ESPN colleague Kendrick Perkins wondered if it was personal.
Redick made his first appearance on First Take in more than three months on Tuesday morning, and it only took him about 30 minutes to go viral. During a segment about the best teams in the Eastern Conference, Redick ripped Rivers for bemoaning about the difficulty of taking over the Milwaukee Bucks during the season. Rivers left his gig as an NBA analyst on ESPN last month to join the Bucks for a contract reportedly worth $40 million.
JJ Redick calls out his former head coach Doc Rivers, who he will be replacing on ESPN/ABC’s NBA Finals coverage.
“I’ve seen the trend for years. The trend is always making excuses. Doc, we get it. Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard… it’s always an excuse.… pic.twitter.com/NeTGnP1Suw
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 20, 2024
“I’ve seen the trend for years. The trend is always making excuses. Doc, we get it. Taking over a team in the middle of a season is hard,” Redick ranted on First Take. “It’s hard, we get it. Just like getting traded in the middle of the season is hard for a player. We get it. But it’s always an excuse. It’s always throwing your team under the bus.”
Interestingly, Redick had some of his best statistical years in the NBA while playing for Rivers on the Los Angeles Clippers. Redick is also now replacing Rivers on ESPN’s lead NBA broadcast, where he’ll join Mike Breen and Doris Burke in calling the network’s top games, including the Finals. But according to Kendrick Perkins, the rant seemed personal.
“It’s [sic] definitely seems like JJ has something personal against Doc!!” Perkins wrote Tuesday afternoon while quote-tweeting video of Austin Rivers on ESPN’s NBA Today coming to his father’s defense. Perkins quickly deleted the tweet.
Perkins and Redick have their own history of quarrels on ESPN. Last year, the two NBA analysts got heated on First Take after Perkins alleged NBA MVP voters held a racial bias against the league’s Black players, a narrative that Redick was quick to push back on.
Redick might claim to hate hot takes and seeing his name plastered in aggregated headlines across the internet, but he’s just so good at it.
