J.J. Redick gives details of Clippers’ visit to DeAndre Jordan’s home

J.J. Redick provided new details of the Clippers’ famed encampment at the home of DeAndre Jordan during a podcast with Zach Lowe of Grantland on Friday, saying he was already in Houston when Dallas Mavericks forward Chandler Parsons started the Twitter war of emojis as both teams scrambled to get Jordan to sign with them.

Jordan, of course, reneged on a commitment to the Mavericks on Wednesday night, re-signing with the Clippers for four years and $87.6 million in one of the most dramatic reversals in the history of free agency.

Redick said he was scrolling through his Twitter timeline earlier that day when he saw Parsons’ plane emoji.

“Chandler Parsons to the rescue! Yay!” Redick told Lowe somewhat facetiously. “And I’m just like, all right, I’m going to tweet out a car. I’m already here.”

Redick said he had already made the three-hour drive from his home in Austin as part of the Clippers’ efforts to get Jordan to back out of his commitment to the Mavericks. Teammate Blake Griffin had arrived the previous night, Redick said, and was eating dinner with Jordan at the time Jordan sent Mavericks owner Mark Cuban a text saying he was on a date.

Redick described the scene at Jordan’s house as “less a pitch and more just team-building.” Players played spades on the kitchen table until abandoning the game when his parents came back with Cane’s chicken for the Clippers contingent. (The team of Chris Paul and Paul Pierce was beating Redick and Jordan at the time, Redick said.)

Meanwhile, Griffin was scouting Jordan’s home in his efforts to stage a picture he posted to Twitter of a chair wedged against the door, the implication being that the Clippers were trying to keep out the Mavericks. Redick said no one from the Mavericks came to Jordan’s house while he was there.

Believing Jordan’s commitment to return to the Clippers was secure, Redick said he departed in the early evening to help his wife pack for a trip the next day. But he was so engrossed in keeping up with the developments that he took the wrong freeway and drove to San Antonio instead of back home.

“What was supposed to be a three-hour drive,” Redick said, “became a four-hour-and-45-minute drive.”

Redick called Jordan’s decision to stay with the Clippers “vital” for the team because it allowed them to keep one of the NBA’s top rebounders and shot-blockers but acknowledged feeling “a little bit” bad for the Mavericks after Jordan not only backed out of his commitment but failed to inform Cuban of his decision.

“There’s this discussion on Twitter about, ‘Is DeAndre wrong?’ or whatever,” Redick said. “This happens all the time in every business.”

To illustrate his point, Redick said his agent called Minnesota in the summer of 2013 after he backed out of a commitment to sign with the Timberwolves and instead came to the Clippers. Redick also noted that then-Clippers owner Donald Sterling never called him to express his hesitation about the trade that brought Redick to Los Angeles “because he thought I was a bench player or because I was white—I’ve heard both stories.”

Redick called Wednesday “the best day on Twitter maybe ever” because of the emoji war, saying he was unsure why Pierce tweeted out a picture of a rocket ship emoji instead of an actual rocket ship emoji since the veteran small forward had a couple of emoji apps on his phone.

“Wednesday was like one hit after another,” Redick said. “It was like, ‘That’s the best tweet ever. No, wait a minute, that’s the best tweet ever.’ ”

Redick also denied that his giving the Clippers an “F-minus” earlier this week in free agency was an orchestrated attempt to try to put pressure on Jordan to return.

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