Former Sixer JJ Redick went on Zach Lowe’s “Lowe Post” podcast this week to talk about a wide variety of topics. He’s a Pelican now, but touched on a number of Philly related things.

A few quotes of note –

On Kawhi Leonard’s game seven buzzer beater:

So I was on the bench, and I sort of had that perfect angle, because I sort of, as soon as the ball had come in bounds, I sort of walked onto the baseline, not on the court, but onto the baseline. I had a straight-on view of the action. My memory may be a little jogged but I think my arms were crossed, I was watching the ball bounce on the rim, it went in, and I’m not sure I had any initial reaction. It was just shock. Part of you wants to walk off the floor and punch a wall. The other part of you is like, if I’m on the Raptors, I’d wanna dap up the people I just played a seven game series against. So I stayed on the court, I talked to Kyle and Marc and Kawhi and Danny and all of those guys, told them good luck, hope they win a championship, and then walked off.

You get back to the locker room and you see the emotion. I obviously was feeling emotional. Joel started crying. Those are sort of the moments that you don’t forget. As much as you don’t forget the shot, the aftermath of moments like that, you just don’t forget, because there’s just this raw emotion.

At what point did Redick start to wonder if the Sixers starting lineup would stay together for 2019?

I think the Sixers under Josh and Blitz, I think there’s been one consistent, and it’s a lot of turnover in terms of player personnel. Not necessarily turnover with coaching or even the front office, but there’s been player personnel. You go back to the year before, we had I think the #1 starting five in terms of net rating with Dario and Cov. Those guys get traded early in the season. We don’t even start that starting five to begin the year. They put Markelle in that group.

I knew, when the season ended, I knew the fact that we didn’t win – or when Toronto (won it all), our loss was a little validated. So I’m like, ‘alright, I guess there’s a chance we’ll run this back.’ The wild card was Jimmy and what Jimmy wanted to do. For Jimmy, a player of his caliber, it was the first time really where he had the freedom to choose where he wanted to play. I would assume he wanted that 5th year from us. I knew that if he had left, that there was going to be some sign and trade action, and that would directly affect what they could pay me. I never got the sense that they didn’t want to bring me back, it was just, unfortunately it came down to a little bit of economics.

On the Jimmy Butler experience:

I love Jimmy and would play with Jimmy again. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to play basketball, but if there was ever an opportunity to link up with him again, I’d be happy to jump on board with that. He is, I think, in the upper tier of two-way players and really in the upper tier of offensive players, period. I talk with my NBA buddies whether they are front office guys, former players, we talk about team building all the time. We always put our GM hats on. I do think when you’re just throwing pieces together in the middle of the season that there are growing pains, specifically on the basketball side of things. The personnel and pieces have to fit, and if there were any growing pains that’s essentially what it boiled down to. The narrative about Jimmy being a bad guy, I just don’t buy it. It’s not true.

Will Ben Simmons be able to shoot a mid-range jumper?

I think he’ll be able to shoot at some point. A lot of it is confidence. He can shoot it at a high enough clip when he’s shooting spot shots that it should translate at some point to hitting threes in a game. The video that went viral, looks to me like he’s shooting with some confidence there.

Redick and Lowe went on to talk about internet-sensation shooting videos, which kind of derailed the Simmons talk a bit. Here’s the full podcast: