(CHICAGO – June 28, 2024) – “I’ve only been called the N-word to my face by a white man once in my life, and it was on the campus of Duke University while I was doing work with the basketball team. Today, he was named the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. What a world.”
With that tweet on June 25, Halleemah Nash, a Duke alum, author, speaker, and founder of startup Rosecrans Ventures, put the spotlight squarely on JJ Redick, the underqualified, never-coached-anywhere new head coach of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers.
Her tweet got over 30.2 million views in a couple of days.
Redick denied using the N-word, saying it wasn’t a part of his character or vocabulary. Without an audio or videotape, the accusation is likely going nowhere.
The accusation came a day after Redick was crowned as a major head coach with zero high school, college, or pro experience. He was a successful player at Duke. He survived 15 years as an NBA veteran and is a significant sportscaster.
Nash responded after the mandatory denial: “For context, this was years ago, and I believe we all have space to grow- especially from our college-level maturity. We live in a world where these exchanges happen, and the intersection of race and privilege and lack of accountability all collided w/that presser,” she later tweeted. She shut down major back and forth by saying she was taught not to argue with fools because, from a distance, no one can tell the difference.
According to EssentiallySports.com, “A proud Compton, California native, Halleemah is an avid fan of all the California-based sports teams, including the Lakers. After completing her Bachelor in Business Management from Howard University, she joined Duke in 2002 for her Masters in Divinity and Certificate in Non-Profit Management. That was also the year JJ Redick became a Blue Devil and became one of the most popular college players ever.
“According to Nash’s LinkedIn profile, she worked with the university’s basketball team in 2003 and 2004 as the Blue Devil Inner City Youth Project coordinator in 2003-04. Probably it was then the two might have crossed paths.”
EssentiallySports.org reported that she has also worked for NBA teams, non-profits, Nike, the Chicago Blackhawks, the City of Compton Mayor’s Office, the United Nations, and celebrity brands Kobe Bryant and Kendrick Lamar.
All of that would indicate she would be foolish to raise the issue of race, especially against the new White wonder kid on the NBA block. She could easily be blackballed. Her consulting business could collapse in a hurry over a dust-up with a much lesser figure on the radioactive issue of race.
So, even as a lifelong hater of Duke basketball who has passed the intergenerational hate on to my sons, I have to say there is no proof Redick has done anything wrong.
Redick, in a 2020 conversation on Bleacher Report, talked about how the murder of George Floyd by a White Minnesota cop affected him. While not Black, the incident made him sick to his stomach, and he cried, he said. He talked about playing on a majority Black AAU team, having conversations, and watching how differently he and his Black teammates were treated at the same mall, with Blacks coming out on the short end. He also talked about being homeschooled early in life by hippie parents.
However, as many Blacks have noted, Redick may be innocent. Generally, White declarations that it could not have happened say some critical things.
First, the “believe women” mandate—and that means White women—has never extended to Black women or believing accounts of racism, racial bias, or racial overtones.
@jonxgenius tweeted on “X:” “Lol, it’s been jokes on JJ Redick allegedly saying the N-word, but nigga this is America, why is it so hard to believe?” In the tweet series, he continued: “Especially a white teenager? Lol, be real, man. Happens every day.” “And he went to Duke, too, lol. … it’s not hard to believe at all, no matter how people feel about the ‘timing.’ ”
@ImBillRay said, “A lot of people are too young to remember JJ at Duke, but those who can probably aren’t too shocked by this story.” @robynrbieber added: “I’m not understanding why people are saying she’s lying. Does this not happen?”
The college professor and commentator Marc Lamont Hill raised the issue in a “Night School” YouTube video. He knows Redick to some degree and says it doesn’t sound like the man he knows. But, Hill added, there was a tsunami of responses to Nash from people who know neither she nor Redick says anything.
Even with some knowledge of Redick and knowing people who know Redick, “I still just didn’t dismiss what Halimah said,” observed Hill. “Why are you so quick to dismiss her account? It seems like because she’s a Black woman. We love to dismiss the claims of Black women.” Hill continued that she didn’t move to cash in on her words, didn’t go on significant platforms, or sue Redick.
If you only know of him from TV and all you know about her is from Twitter, why do you attack her for lying? he asked. Hill said he would contact Redick and Nash to get more from them and seek the truth. But this is not something we should ignore, he added.
Kneejerk reactions to matters of race happen all the time. In March 2023, it surfaced in a discussion between Redick and former NBA champion Kendrick Perkins on ESPN’s “First Take.” “The ESPN NBA analysts had a contentious back and forth after Redick called out Perkins for implying on the show that there is racial bias in the NBA MVP voting,” reported the New York Post.
“Perkins appeared on ‘First Take’ and took issue with Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic, who is making a case for a third-straight MVP award, and accused the Serbian center of ‘stat-padding’ to average a triple-double on the season.
“At the time, Perkins asked why Redick didn’t mention that only three players have ever been crowned the NBA’s MVP without finishing in the top 10 in scoring, noting they’re all white: former Mavericks center Dirk Nowitzki, former Suns guard Steve Nash, and Jokic.”
“Redick said Perkins’ stat-padding accusation was untrue and dismissed the idea that white NBA writers favor white players in MVP voting.”
“But what we just witnessed is the problem with this show, where we create narratives that do not exist in reality. The implication, what you are implying, that the white voters that vote on NBA are racist, that they favor white people, you just said that” Redick declared.
Perkins denied calling anyone racist, saying he just cited facts. “And you’re not about to sit up there and act like it’s something more than that. It’s the facts!” he added.
Anyone who knows anything about pro basketball or life in the United States knows anti-Blackness and White privilege taints every industry and every aspect of American life—including the multi-million dollar job Redick got. The job qualified Blacks like Sam Cassell, who just won an NBA championship as a Celtics assistant coach, to go with his three championship wins as a player, but didn’t get.
Race, Redick, and nigger. Here we are again dealing with America’s original and unpardonable sin. Don’t worry; we’ll soon be here again.
Naba’a Muhammad, the award-winning Final Call editor, is the host of “Straight Words With Naba’a Richard Muhammad, Bj Murphy, and James G. Muhammad,” which airs live Tuesdays, 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. Central Time, on WVON AM 1690 Black Talk Radio Chicago and is live-streamed at the iHeart Radio app and WVON.com. Get more of his writing and content at straightwords.com.