New Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick reportedly denied a claim that he called a woman who worked with the Duke basketball team the N-word.
“It never happened,” a spokesperson from Redick’s camp told TMZ Sports on Tuesday.
Halleemah Nash, a Duke alum whose LinkedIn account says she paired the university’s players with a sports mentorship program when Redick starred there in the aughts, took to X after the ex-NBA player was introduced as the Lakers’ coach.
“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,” she wrote. “And today he was named the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. What a world.”
Nash, who now runs a company that fosters job opportunities for “generation Z talent of color,” elaborated on her viral post several hours later.
“For context, this was years ago and Im a believer that we all have space to grow- especially from our college level maturity,” she wrote. “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.”
Redick, a former college player of the year who played 15 seasons in the NBA, reportedly signed a four-year deal despite a glaring void on his resume.
“I have zero coaching experience in the NBA, but I would argue that I’m very experienced. It started 22 years ago when I went to Duke,” he said at his news conference.
Redick is often active on social media but had yet to address the accusation on X as of this writing.
HuffPost has reached out to the Lakers for comment from the team and Redick.
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