Bill Simmons gives meek response to JJ Redick for comments about his time at The Ringer

JJ Redick is one of the fastest rising stars in sports media.

After retiring from a 15-year NBA career in 2021, Redick has become one of the top faces of ESPN  (DIS) - Get Free Report. He gained a lot of prominence for not backing down to Stephen A. Smith when he would guest on "First Take" and is already a member of the network's number two NBA broadcast crew alongside Richard Jefferson and Ryan Ruocco.

But Redick's sports media career started well before he retired from the NBA as in 2016, he became the first active NBA player to start his own podcast. A year later, Redick's podcast was picked up by The Ringer, the media company founded by former ESPN personality Bill Simmons.

"The JJ Redick Podcast with Tommy Alter" was on The Ringer Podcast Network from 2017 to 2020, and it helped solidify Redick's place as a member of sports media despite still being an active player.

But Redick and Alter, his co-host, left The Ringer in August 2020 and quickly launched their own podcast,"The Old Man and the Three," on their own network, ThreeFourTwo Productions. 

Redick and Alter explained at the top of the first episode of "The Old Man and the Three" that they left The Ringer, which was purchased by Spotify  (SPOT) - Get Free Report in 2020, because they wanted to start their own podcast and have ownership over the content they were releasing.

"The show's going to function in a lot of the ways that 'The JJ Redick Podcast' functioned, except we own it. It's ours. We own the name, we own the IP, and we started a company," Redick said.

Related: ESPN's JJ Redick makes powerful critique of the sports media landscape

He also added that he left The Ringer on good terms with Simmons and the entire company.

"My relationship and your relationship with Bill and The Ringer is great," Redick said to Alter. "Bill and I remain friends. [I have] nothing but good things to say about everyone at The Ringer. Again, this came down to me having recorded a hundred episodes of a podcast that I did not own wanting to own said podcast."

But despite what seemed like a very amicable split with a definite reason, new information has come to light over three years after Redick's departure from The Ringer.

On Tuesday, Dec. 5, Redick guested on "The Lowe Post," the NBA podcast of his ESPN colleague Zach Lowe. During the final minutes of the nearly 90-minute podcast, Redick and Lowe were talking about the transition between audio and video formats for podcasting.

Redick slipped in a comment about his own podcast's transition to video, alluding to some hesitation from The Ringer during his time there.

"I realized three and a half years ago, when I was still at The Ringer, and The Ringer finally agreed to allow us to tape a couple of our podcast interviews. We taped with Zion, and then we taped with Jimmy Butler and Duncan Robinson. And the Duncan one came out the week after the world essentially shut down. But the realization was: audio doesn't go viral, video goes viral," Redick said.

Related: Bill Simmons gives an honest assessment about his time at ESPN

Redick's comments went viral on X (formerly Twitter) after sports media site Awful Announcing wrote the story. Simmons gave a rather polite response to Redick Wednesday, Dec. 6, but said that Redick wasn't too focused on his podcast until after he left The Ringer.

"Hey @jj_redick — I like you + enjoyed our time together," Simmons wrote. "You did 8 pod eps total in 2019. 3 had NBA guests. You started doing video pods on mid/Jan 2020 and the pandemic happened 7 weeks later. You never took the pod seriously until 2020 - that’s why it’s good. I’m still a fan."

Hey @jj_redick — I like you + enjoyed our time together. You did 8 pod eps total in 2019. 3 had NBA guests. You started doing video pods on mid/Jan 2020 and the pandemic happened 7 weeks later. You never took the pod seriously until 2020 - that’s why it’s good. I’m still a fan. pic.twitter.com/CJJW56gJDm— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) December 6, 2023

Redick has yet to respond to Simmons, and a quick run through of Redick's X account shows that he has not acknowledged Simmons tweet on X with a reply or even a like. Redick released the latest episode of "The Old Man and the Three" on the morning of Thursday, Dec. 7, but did not acknowledge the Simmons tweet.

To Redick's point, "The Old Man and the Three" has found significant success on video, and is less than 12,000 subscribers away from reaching one million subscribers on YouTube. That's significantly more than the 112,000 that Bill Simmons has on YouTube.

"The Bill Simmons Podcast" ranked third on Spotify's Top Sports Podcasts of 2023, three spots ahead of "The Old Man and the Three."

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