[electronic music]
- What's up, GQ?
I'm J.J. Redick, and these are my essentials.
First up, Brunello Cucinelli travel blazer.
I got this, like, five or six years ago
when I was living in LA.
It's incredibly lightweight,
it's pretty much completely unstructured.
I take it on almost every road trip when I travel,
if I need to go to a nice restaurant.
When you go to a lot of three-star Michelin places,
a lot of times, the jacket's required.
Not that I dine in three-star Michelin places
all the time, but.
Brunello Cucinelli is, without a doubt,
my favorite designer, my favorite brand.
I call everything that he makes lifetime pieces.
I think they're an investment.
I have some of his stuff from eight or nine years ago
that still looks timeless, still looks good.
I was probably introduced to the brand from GQ, [laughs]
would be my guess.
- [Interviewer] Do you have any style influencers?
- Oh, style influencers?
I think, for me, it's like David Beckham,
Ryan Gosling, just heartthrob.
Next item.
A lot of people probably don't realize what this is.
It is actually an Ah-So wine bottle opener.
During the season, guys travel with wine now,
like, it's a thing in the NBA.
Everybody knows LeBron is a huge wine guy.
D Wade is as well.
I had a teammate this past season in Philadelphia,
Jimmy Butler, Jimmy Buckets,
Jimmy was the one who introduced me
to the Ah-So wine bottle opener.
Older bottles, in the cork,
if they've been sitting in a cellar for a long time,
can sometimes get a little brittle and break.
This thing solves that.
So essentially you put the longer end
and wedge it in between the cork and the bottleneck,
then you put the shorter end opposite,
and you just kinda gently wedge, wedge,
wedge, wedge, wedge.
And then you just start turning.
I have about a 97% success rate so far with this.
If you drink anything older than, like, 10 years,
you should really be using one
of these Ah-So wine bottle openers.
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Okay.
The next item is a book.
I'm actually currently reading this book.
It's taken me a couple weeks of travel to get 209 pages in.
Books are really important to me.
I have books all over my house,
I collect coffee table books,
and I have a office slash library in our apartment.
Our dining room table actually is covered in books.
I just love books and I'm always reading.
I always travel with at least one book.
If I feel like I'm close to finishing the book,
I'll bring a second book just in case.
- [Interviewer] What are your thoughts on the Kindle?
- Oh, I gotta have a physical book.
I don't understand,
the guy the next to me on the plane last night
was reading a Kindle and I just, [clicks tongue]
I don't get it, I don't get it.
I tried to do the iBooks on an iPad,
like, probably seven or eight years ago,
and I downloaded a few books,
and I got like seven pages in,
and I just said this is not for me,
and I haven't tried since.
There's something about the smell of a book,
the pages that I love.
There's also something about finishing a book
and getting to put it down and place it somewhere,
and then you walk later on through your home,
and you see that book and you remember that story,
or you remember something you learned from that book.
The other part is being able to pass them down
if you feel like you're willing to part with it.
Then, here, share a story.
- [Interviewer] Have you ever been in a book club?
- [laughs] Yes, but I didn't follow through with it.
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This might actually be my favorite essential item
that I have, my Common Projects.
I don't necessarily splurge on a lot of things in my life,
but I always have two pairs of white Common Projects.
One pair crispy clean, in case I need it for an event
or if I'm gonna wear it on the bench during a game.
And then I have my second pair,
which I'm wearing right now.
And they get a little dirtier.
As soon as the dirty pair gets a little too dirty,
then I move to the crisp pair,
and then I get a new crispy pair.
It's a cycle.
And it's obsessive, and I'll admit that.
You know what is interesting,
I just realized I have some of my essentials
in these shoes that I brought.
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So, I found this essential in my Common Projects.
This is beetelite.
It's concentrated beet crystals, essentially beet root,
for those that don't know,
for sorta cardiovascular endurance training
and endurance sports, like basketball,
beets are an incredible nutritional supplement.
During the season I eat beets twice a day.
I don't mean, like, one or two beets.
I literally mean give me a bowl of beets.
At team meals, if they've got beets on the spread,
I will say give me an inordinate amount of beets.
Just put a plate of beets.
And I eat 'em, and then right before our meeting
with 35 minutes on the clock,
I pour one of these into a bottle of water, shake it up,
and I chug it.
- [Interviewer] Have you always liked beets?
- No, who likes beets? [laughs]
Beets taste terrible.
They're really tough to eat,
and so putting down like 12, 13 beets
in a sitting is sometimes difficult.
But I genuinely believe in the science behind it,
and I also believe in the results I've gotten
from eating a lot of beets.
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My next essential.
Everybody needs to wear deodorant.
MALIN+GOETZ, I love all their products.
I use literally five or six of their products.
The eucalyptus deodorant is my favorite deodorant
that I've ever used.
I don't like the smell,
I don't like to smell like something,
so eucalyptus has that really subtle smell.
And I also have sensitive skin, you know,
it's the Irish in me, so, this has been just amazing.
You know, I can go do a two hour practice,
I can go to a two hour game or whatever, sweat,
and still smell good and my skin's not irritated.
They also have an SPF30 moisturizer
that during the summer I use every day,
and it's the only thing that doesn't agitate my skin.
Boom.
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So this is a fun one.
The TriggerPoint foam roller.
That's the brand, they're based in Austin, Texas.
I foam roll, like, two or three times a day.
I travel with it on every road trip.
Part of it is to deal with soreness,
but the other part is you're actually hydrating
your fascial tissue when you foam roll.
I also figured out a way when I roll on my back
to crack my spine.
You know, when my back gets tight, let's say after a flight,
or after carrying my three year old around all day,
I'll foam roll my back and that feels amazing.
- [Interviewer] In your career,
have you always cared so much about recovery?
- Yeah, I mean, I started thinking more about recovery
and performance, nutrition, probably by, like,
year four or five,
and the older I've gotten, I just turned 35,
I'm getting ready to start my 14th season in the NBA,
it's really all I think about.
I'm trying to sort of maximize my career
for as long as I can,
and you see a lot of athletes now,
whether it's Tom Brady in football,
or Roger Federer in tennis and Rafael Nadal,
that are playing at a really high level
well into their 30s,
and they're using and taking advantage
of all these new technologies and new apparatus
that can really help us with recovery.
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I'm not a tech person, but I had to bring one techy thing,
so I just brought my AirPods.
These have sort of been a game changer for me.
You know, we moved to New York, like, three years ago.
I wear these almost every day on the subway,
it also tells people to [bleep] off
and not bother me, which is nice. [laughs]
It is true.
I listen to a lot of music.
I listen to a lot of podcasts.
Sam Harris has a great podcast.
I listen to a lot of sports podcasts, obviously.
My favorite band, I love Mumford and Sons.
I just saw them a few weeks ago in Denver, Colorado.
Ever since that show,
I haven't stopped listening to Mumford.
I go work out
at the National Basketball Players Association gym,
and so there's other basketball players in there working out
and they don't listen to Mumford.
I've got 14 years in the NBA,
so I get choose sort of the playlist,
'cause a lot of times I'm the oldest guy in the gym.
So there's some level of consternation
on their part towards me, but I deal with it.
A white T-shirt.
Anybody who knows me knows that I have a basic uniform,
black jeans, Common Projects, and a white tee.
That's pretty much it.
This is about as much color
as you'll ever see me wear, navy.
This is, like, my new favorite white tee,
it's from Reigning Champ.
These, economically speaking,
are a much more affordable T-shirt.
I have multiple white tees.
I would be wearing one right now,
but the other two were at the dry cleaners, so.
- [Interviewer] The white tees?
- I dry clean my white tees, yeah.
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My wife convinced me to bring this one.
I'll just be honest, but these are my pajamas.
These are from Sleepy Jones.
Every year, on Christmas Eve,
the Christmas Eve elf gives me,
and whoever we're sharing Christmas with, a pair of pajamas.
At this point, I think I've figured out
who the Christmas Eve elf is,
but I don't wanna name her.
I saw this pair, and I put in a request
through a secondary channel
to tell the Christmas Eve elf,
hey, I think I really want this pair of pajamas.
They're incredibly comfortable, they're very lightweight,
you can wear 'em year round.
I feel like this is very 1960s, like, old man pajamas,
there's something that's very cool to me about that.
It's a button up, and it's got sort of like,
a camp collar, almost, on it.
And a deep V,
so you're sorta letting it just hang out at your house.
And they've been really great to me.
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For my next item,
I brought a pair of swimming trunks.
But not just any swimming trunks.
These are from Orlebar Brown.
They double as a regular pair of, like, Bermuda shorts.
They're lined, like any swim trunks are.
I can sort of wear these all day.
If I'm at a pool or if I'm out on vacation at the beach,
they dry super quick.
Throw on a white tee or a polo and go straight to dinner.
And, yes, that's disgusting grooming wise
and hygiene, I know, but salt water cleans you.
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My last essential,
and also one of the most important essentials, this bag.
I actually brought all of my essentials today in this bag.
Everything fit in this bag,
and something couldn't be essential
if it didn't fit in this bag for me.
This bag is from Bottega Veneta.
I bought it over 10 years ago.
Chelsea and I had just gotten engaged,
and we were on vacation,
and she said, "Hey, I wanna get you a gift to celebrate,
"you know, us getting engaged".
I use this bag literally every day, it's the truth.
It's been well worn.
I've taken it literally all over the world.
Like a year and a half ago, one of the zippers broke.
It was the first thing that had gone wrong.
I took it into the store here in New York,
and one of the things they asked me,
they were like, "Do you want to treat this bag
"and sort of make it look brand new?"
I said absolutely not.
I love that it's worn in.
This is like a very special bag to me,
and it's something that, you know,
my kids will have one day.
And, yes, I've endorsed a lot of brands today.
I've not been paid for any of this,
but I'm endorsing the Bottega Veneta carry all.
You need to get one.
All right, so that's it.
I'm J.J. Redick.
These are my essentials.
Thanks, GQ.
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