JJ Redick ended up being in the news last week after his exchange with Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on First Take as he disagreed with Russo’s comments that Draymond Green is a polarizing athlete. It was an exchange that captured the attention of many in sports media.
Redick had ESPN NBA analyst Tim Legler on his podcast, The Old Man and the Three, which was recorded last Thursday. On that episode, Redick said that being on First Take is his favorite thing to do at ESPN and that he enjoyed doing the show with Legler that week (Stephen A Smith was off). The exchange comes at around the 11:30 mark of the episode:
“I thought it would be the show that I hated doing the most. It’s actually my favorite show to do,” Redick said. “The show is structured around a debate-style show. When you were on, that was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in media because we just got to talk about basketball for almost 2 hours. It was great”
Another reason Redick enjoys First Take is that the show is unpredictable and time is not limited to talk about a particular subject:
“In all the other shows, you are so limited and a lot of it is by time, let’s be very clear on that. You are in a certain block, there’s 3 other people on a show with you, you might get 30 seconds on an answer, it may or may not come back to you…There’s something that’s very organic about First Take.”
