Inside NBA Star JJ Redick's One-of-a-Kind Brooklyn Duplex

“We were never supposed to live here,” says Chelsea Redick, sinking into a curved sofa covered in a creamy Pierre Frey linen in the Dumbo duplex she and her husband JJ, All-Star NBA veteran, new New Orleans Pelican, and sometime podcast host, share with their sons, Knox, 5, and Kai, 3. Since the couple met during JJ’s rookie year with the Orlando Magic in 2006, they have resided in a whopping 14 residences across six cities. Think of it as a high-stakes game of musical chairs where you follow the basketball to the best contract.

So in 2015 when the Redicks initially started apartment hunting in New York City, they were just looking for a pied-à-terre—somewhere to put their feet up in the off-season. JJ was playing for the Los Angeles Clippers at the time, with no idea where he’d land next. They had recently welcomed their first child and wanted to be closer to their families on the East Coast. During a series of trips to New York for away games and the All-Star weekend, they pounded the pavement touring properties across downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. “For whatever reason, we liked Dumbo,” says JJ, perched on a midcentury Marco Zanuso chair, his casual jeans and T-shirt revealing a tattoo sleeve that’s in refreshing contrast to his elegant surroundings. “We liked the grittiness of it and the warehouse backstory.” They put a deposit down on a penthouse apartment in a 1913 factory building with train tracks running through the lobby. It was still in the process of being converted to residential, so they leapt in sight unseen. A year-and-a-half passed, they had a second child, and the apartment still wasn’t ready. Meanwhile, Chelsea’s twin sister and her husband were now living in Dumbo with a baby on the way. Chelsea wanted to be closer to them. The Redicks decided to rent a place in the neighborhood, they enrolled their eldest in preschool, and she started settling in while JJ finished out the season in L.A.

Their penthouse apartment was still a construction zone, but Chelsea would stop by the concierge desk to collect packages. Pretty soon, she had charmed one of the doormen into sneaking her up to their unit. (She and JJ had still never laid eyes on it.) In something straight out of a detective playbook, they tiptoed in after 11 p.m., their iPhone flashlights guiding the way. “The second I walked in, I was like, ‘It’s too small for us,’” she recalls. “Then I made him sneak me into this one.” Not only was it more spacious, it boasted an epic 2,600 square foot terrace. “I did one lap, phoned JJ, and said, ‘We need to call tomorrow and swap it.’”

Their “pied-a-terre” was starting to look more like a full-time residence. Which meant the stock finishes it came with might need some rethinking, too. The couple called on decorator Michael Aiduss, whom they had been introduced to through their brother-in-law, to drive the process. “One of the first things Chelsea told me was, ‘I would love to live in a European apartment,’” the designer relays from his office in Montclair, New Jersey. A fair enough request, except for the fact that their industrial Brooklyn loft couldn’t have been further from a Parisian maisonette, geographically or philosophically. “It was a very careful editing process of crafting the spaces to make them seem more formal in their architectural organization, while understanding that there are two large walls of glass windows that wouldn’t have existed in a classical apartment,” he continues. Originally, the front door opened directly onto the living and entertaining space, with an unsightly soffit hanging overhead. “There wasn’t any sense of logic and alignment. When you create a classical plan, there are sight lines that are sincere in the way that a vestibule would precede a room, so there’s an elegant sense of passage.” The designer kicked out the wall opposite the long expanse of windows to create a proper entryway and continued the line across to the kitchen so more defined spaces could come into focus within the open plan: the sitting room with alcove bar, a dining area, and a kitchen and family room. They replaced the laminated stock floors with white oak herringbone ones and added traditional French moldings and archways throughout. “The idea was to create an apartment that felt like it had integrity,” says Aiduss.

“What started out as, ‘We should do some crown moldings,’ turned into a gut reno,” Chelsea admits with a chuckle. By this point in the journey, JJ had signed with the Philadelphia 76ers, making for an easy commute back and forth, and they were renting an apartment a few floors below the one they were renovating. They had become familiar enough with the building’s delivered finishes to form opinions about them. “One thing led to another,” says JJ, “and before you know it, we’re changing every bathroom—literally every nook and cranny.”

They had remodeled a Spanish colonial house in Austin, Texas, so they weren’t totally green. Through that project, Chelsea had developed an eye for Fortuny fabrics and vintage furniture, such as the pair of 1950s lady chairs by Zanuso that now flank the custom sofa in the sitting room. JJ, too, has taken an interest in design. “I love a backstory,” he muses. “It’s the same reason I geek out about a vintage watch or wine stuff.” It’s a curiosity Aiduss appreciated: “He asked the right questions. In a really educated way, JJ was interested in knowing the story line behind something or what would make it appropriate architecturally. It was this wonderful dialogue.”

With the designer, the couple dreamed up the ultimate statement kitchen, lacquered top to bottom in Aegean blue with bronze accents. Chelsea insisted on brass fixtures throughout the home. “Michael initially didn’t want to use it for the bathrooms because it gets tarnished,” she says, “but I love a tarnished brass.” Here, JJ interjects, suggesting the word “patina.” Speaking to the functionality of the kitchen, he notes, “In the developer design, there was no pantry, not even a drawer—everyone needs a junk drawer.” They added storage cabinets along the window and a large island in the center for that junk drawer. The family room just opposite features a custom cabinet in the style of Jansen, which conceals a television that mechanically rises out James Bond–style so Knox and Kai can eat at the island bar while watching Ninjago.

For more formal gatherings, there’s a large round ebonized table under a 1940s Venini chandelier, though Chelsea concedes with a laugh, “It’s mostly used for Taco Tuesday with our kids.” Adds JJ: “I would envision hosting a holiday here, but I play every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s, Super Bowl,” he shrugs, “So, we haven’t used this as an adult dining space yet.”

Of course, the pièce de résistance is the terrace that wraps around the entire apartment. “For me it came down to outdoor space,” JJ says. “I wanted a real patio, not a Juliet balcony.” Adds Chelsea: “It was like furnishing a whole other home—only with plants.” (They shut their street down for a day to crane up all the greenery.) Aiduss collaborated with Gunn Landscape Architecture on the garden, lining the perimeters with a canopy of trees planted in stately Pennoyer Newman pots. Much like he had done with the open-plan interior, here too he sought to create more intimate pockets via defined spaces for sitting and dining, including a full outdoor kitchen with café tables opposite it. At the same time, says Chelsea, “We wanted to keep it open enough so the boys can do bikes and scooters and skateboards.”

Back inside the apartment, the master quarters unfold like a presidential suite. “You shut the door, and it’s your private space,” she says, leading the way back. JJ’s study is wrapped in a moody gray lacquer with a leather chesterfield tucked into a library nook. “I told Michael I wanted it to feel like you’re in a private room at Soho House,” he says of the gentlemen’s club vibe. It also boasts an en suite bathroom and closet. “We’ve learned that you should have separate bathrooms,” Chelsea explains matter-of-factly. While JJ’s is wrapped entirely in black tile, hers is light and luminous with white Venetian plaster walls and a calacatta gold soaking tub and vanity. “The luxury of this apartment,” says JJ, “is that we had enough space to each get our own spaces. I’m a lot more OCD than Chelsea, so the fact that I can have my own closet and bathroom and it can be exactly the way I want it is amazing.” He turns his eyes toward his wife’s seemingly immaculate mirror-paneled closet, telling her, “But it still bugs me when you leave your dresses out on the chair two days before you wear them.” She playfully counters, “Well, what bugs me is in the middle of the night when you get up and use my bathroom.” Despite his plea that “It’s closer,” she says, “But mine is mine!”

Upstairs, there’s a guest room and the boys’ bedroom, with its starry-night theme. “They definitely hit the jackpot,” JJ says, noting that it was originally the master bedroom. Aiduss likens its multipurpose layout—workstation with double desks, a reading corner that features a miniaturized version of JJ’s chesterfield, an art table, and built-in bunk beds—to a studio apartment. “Again, I’m OCD” says JJ of the setup. “I don’t want their clutter all over.” To date, no one but him has slept on the top bunk. “Night one was Kai’s first time not sleeping in a crib, and the boys were like, ‘We’ve gotta see you,’” he says. Kai had claimed the bottom bed, Knox the trundle, and JJ had a 1 p.m. game the next day, so voilà! (NBA stars, they’re just like us!)

One thing that is noticeably absent from the home are any nods to JJ’s résumé. “In my first house, I put up all my college trophies and some pictures of me playing at Duke,” he says. “And I didn’t play at all my first two years in the NBA. I realized how silly it was that I had all this stuff hanging there. It’s also a little vain.” The kids take center stage here—even if their Ninjago suitcases in the hallway hint at the family’s since-completed move to the Big Easy.

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“And we’re off again!” sighs Chelsea, addressing the elephant in the room. A two-year contract with the Pelicans means the Redicks are indeed back on the road, but they insist they’ll return to Brooklyn soon. “Everything changed once we had kids,” she says. JJ seconds the notion. “You start to think about things differently. I don’t want to be dragging the boys across the country for an extended period. We’ve established roots and built relationships here that we’ve come to cherish.” He adds, “I’ve had probably 20 people call or text me asking if I’m selling the apartment, and I’m like, ‘This is not our apartment. This is our home.’”