Duke’s J.J. Redick: Great Shooter, Great Player

By: Linda Orlando

When it comes to basketball, lovers of the game are among the most rabid of all sports fans. Their passion and outspokenness often add flavor and excitement to the game, providing the players with rousing support that encourages them to excel in winning. But when fans turn on an opposing team or a particular player, their sometimes extreme efforts to rattle and distract that player can border on illegal harassment. For some reason J.J. Redick seems to elicit that response from many basketball fans, merely by being terrific at what he does.

Shooting 40.5% on 3-pointers, Redick is one of the best shooters in the game from long range. From the free throw line, his percentage is 93.7%, the best in NCAA history. In a spectacular career performance, he helped Duke avoid its first three-game losing streak in nine years. Thanks to Redick, the short-handed Blue Devils won the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament for the sixth time in seven years and are in the round of 16 for the eighth straight year. According to Blue Devils Coach Mike Krzyzewski, "J.J. has become a complete player. Everyone watches his shooting ability. He’s found different ways to score; he’s become our best off-the-ball perimeter defender; he’s handled the ball; he’s become a leader for us."

Redick has added his own spin on taking his game to the next level by driving the ball to the basket aggressively. He believes he was born to shoot, with a natural jump shot, but his relentless work ethic has helped him to evolve from being simply a great shooter to being a great player. His hard work and determination were rewarded Wednesday, when the Duke junior was named the ACC Player of the Year, after being named ACC Tournament MVP on Sunday. One of the best pure shooters in the country, Redick is also an All-America candidate due to his unlimited range and ability to create open shots. He has consistently exhibited skills at both ends of the court, making him not only an outside scoring threat but also an outstanding player. He has made at least one 3-point field goal in 67 games, in nine of which he made five or more, and at least three triples 41 times. But his skill doesn’t all come from just luck and good genes, and he knows it.

"I can’t speak enough and give conditioning enough credit," said Redick, who shed 23 pounds in the off-season. With Duke concerned about depth heading into this season, the Blue Devils team embarked on a heavyweight conditioning program, which Redick embraced with vigor. "It’s made the difference between me being a pretty good college player and a really good college player. I think that’s been the biggest key for me this year. When you’re in great shape, you can think clearly. If you’re not tired, then your mind is strong. I feel like I can run forever." Redick is also quick to give credit to a higher power while explaining his thoughts about his abilities. "God has possessed me with a gift that not a lot of people have in my jump shot," Redick says. "But if I thought of myself as a shooter, I’d be a pretty crappy basketball player. I don’t think I’m Kobe Bryant and I don’t think I’m a stand-still, one-trick pony. I’m somewhere in the middle. I know I can do other things besides shoot, so why limit myself?"

Redick is the first to admit that he had some problems last season, both mentally and physically, and his difficulties showed up clearly on the statistics sheet. Redick hit only 24% of his 3-pointers in his final five games before the NCAA Tournament last year, and the numbers didn’t improve much during the tournament, where he hit only 34% from long range. But this season was a different story entirely. "Certainly last year about this time, during the ACC Tournament and the first half of the NCAA, I was questioning a lot of things," Redick says. "I think there was one time [this season], which maybe lasted a day, where I thought, ‘Man, this really isn’t fun. I’m stressed out. It’s a burden.’ And then it wasn’t like that anymore. But last year, maybe the whole season I felt like that. It was just a constant mental struggle for me. This year, though, I’ve never really lost confidence at all. I think it’s just knowing that I’ve prepared and knowing that my shots are going to fall eventually."

Coach Mike Krzyzewski has nothing but praise for Redick’s transformation. "He’s become one of my great players here; my great players here have understood a daily commitment to being at that level and what it takes." Krzyzewski also called Redick the team’s best off-the-ball defender, a compliment Redick appreciates, knowing how far he has come. "As I’ve gotten older and my college career has gone on, I think I’ve gotten better in certain areas, specifically defense," Redick says. "I was probably one of the top-seven worst high school defenders in the state of Virginia my senior year. If they had a team for that, I would have been on it." But now, as the only unanimous choice for All-ACC, the only teams Redick will be on are all-star squads.

Despite his amazing abilities and his dedication to honing his basketball prowess, Redick has managed to amass an impressive number of critics and angry fans from opposing teams, most of whom consider him to be cocky and smug, and they love to hate him. Baffling as they may be, some things may explain why Redick incites fury in fans: he plays for a powerhouse college team; he is white (which makes him the minority in basketball); his name is J.J. (which sounds like a kid’s name); and he is extremely good. These things, when combined with the sometimes irrational passion of college hoop fans, make Redick-haters foolishly believe they can make a difference in a game by harassing, booing, cursing, yelling, and doing their best to try to distract him from doing his best.

One University of Maryland sophomore is particularly devoted to tormenting the ACC’s Player of the Year, from chanting obscenities during games to placing prank calls to Redick’s cell phone. Liz Mercer was not even a basketball fan when she arrived in Maryland last year from Boise, Idaho. But during her first three months at school, she quickly became a rabid Terps supporter, swearing herself to a campaign of terror against the team’s enemies, particularly J.J. Redick. Laughing, Mercer exclaims, "When I first got here, I was like ‘What’s basketball?’ I can’t believe how stupid I was. I didn’t even know what a ****head Mike Krzyzewski was or how stupid and ugly Duke fans were. But worst of all, I had no idea how much I hated J.J. Redick. I hate you, J.J.! I hate you and your stupid, smug face! I hope he’s reading this, so he knows that Liz Mercer from Boise hates him."

Mercer’s first view of Redick was during a game last year, and she was immediately irritated by his outgoing personality on the court and the extended follow-through on his jump shots. "I was sitting there thinking what a cocky jerk he was," says the 20-year-old Mercer, who attended the game with friends. "Just looking at him makes me sick, and I’m not the only one who feels that way." Mercer doesn’t mince words when talking about what she considers to be her life’s calling. "My whole life, every fiber of my being, is dedicated to distracting and tormenting J.J. Redick," Mercer seethes. "I don’t even sleep anymore. If I have a free night I spend it devising new ways to make his life miserable. It’s a difficult calling, but a noble one. If I don’t do it, then J.J. will never know that he’s an ***hole and we hate him. So if you’re reading this, J.J., everyone in Maryland thinks you’re an ***hole and hates you." At a party one night Mercer somehow got Redick’s cell phone number and called him over and over again, leaving voice mails full of profanity and angry invectives. At one point she looked at the clock and realized it was dawn; she had been up all night obsessively calling J.J. Redick. According to Mercer, "I thought there might be something wrong with me but then I realized no, there’s something wrong with him. He’s an ***hole, remember?" Mercer is evidently so caught up in hating someone that it’s irrelevant to her that he is a "jerk" in a sport she couldn’t care less about.

Redick takes the idiocy of Mercer and others like her in stride, though, knowing that he will probably have to put up with it for the duration of his college career. "Everywhere I go people seem to hate me," says the Blue Devils leading scorer. "I don’t understand it. It doesn’t bother me, though. I actually think it’s kind of funny. They heap so much attention on me it’s like they’re obsessed with me. Don’t they realize they’re just making themselves look stupid and pathetic?" Obviously Duke’s star performer has his head on straight, unlike the obsessive Redick-haters who think they’re having an impact on his life. No matter how much extreme effort people put into hating him, Redick just lets their ridiculous shenanigans roll off his back while he concentrates on giving his all to Duke. Perhaps his poetry says it best: "I guess it comes with the territory, I probably shouldn’t complain. ’Cause I’m the best shooter that ever lived; just look at all those foul shots that I drain."