Luke Walton, a Manhattan Beach resident since his rookie year as a Laker in 2003, has been named his former teams’ new coach.
The Lakers announced Walton’s hire as the 26th coach in franchise history on Friday night. It was a surprisingly quick courtship; the Lakers fired head coach Byron Scott five days ago, and Walton, currently an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors, was reportedly the only candidate interviewed. The interview occurred last night in Oakland, according to ESPN, after which all other scheduled interviews were cancelled.
“I loved everything about my time at Golden State and learning from Steve (Kerr),” Walton told ESPN. “I’ll forever be grateful to him, the organization and the team. But I have always dreamed of being a head coach and the chance to do that for an organization like the Lakers doesn’t come around very often.”
Among those who sought the job was a former teammate of Walton’s, Derek Fisher, who was fired as coach of the New York Knicks earlier this season.
Walton, 36, played ten seasons in the NBA, nine with the Lakers, who drafted him with the 32nd pick in the second round of the 2003 draft. He is the son of former UCLA legend Bill Walton and grew up in San Diego. He won championships with the Lakers in 2009 and 2010.
Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak issued an exultant statement Friday.
“We’re excited to bring Luke back to Los Angeles, where we feel he’s going to start an outstanding coaching career,” said Kupchak. “He’s one of the brightest young coaching minds in the game and we feel fortunate that he’ll be leading the on-court future of our team.”
Walton’s hiring comes on the heels of one of Lakers’ worst season ever, but one that earned the team a potentially top pick in a draft most observers feel contains two superstars-in-waiting, Louisiana State’s Ben Simmons and Duke’s Brandon Ingram. They also possess salary cap room that could allow the team to sign a maximum-level free agent, and are expected to heavily pursue Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant, an unrestricted free agent.
Walton is currently in his second season as an assistant coach with the Warriors. Earlier this season, he posted a 39-4 record as interim head coach in Steve Kerr’s absence, including a 24-0 start, the best start in NBA history; the NBA later credited those victories to Kerr, but Walton has been perhaps the most sought-after coaching candidate ever since. Unusually for an assistant coach, he finished 8th in Coach of the Year balloting (an award Kerr won).
Walton worked as a coach for the Lakers development league affiliate, the Los Angeles Defenders, during the 2013-14 season, and then spent two years on the Warriors’ bench, where he was elevated to interim head coach status after Kerr underwent back surgery prior to this season’s beginning. The Warriors are the defending NBA champions.
Walton, like his father, was considered exceptionally skilled at passing for a big man, something that could become particularly relevant if the team lands either Simmons or Ingram, both of whom are likewise unusually skilled passers for their size. In an interview with the Easy Reader after he was drafted by the Lakers in 2003, he said he’d chosen to live in Manhattan Beach partly because it reminded him of his childhood home in San Diego, where he grew up surfing.
From a 2003 story in Easy Reader:
Sometimes, a match just feels right, and this is one of those times. This isn’t just because Walton is one of the most deft passing big men in Pac-10 history – the only big man, in fact, to ever lead the conference in assists, averaging 6.3 as a junior – and passing is a skill particularly valued in forwards in Lakers’ famed “triangle” offense. Nor is it just because of Walton’s stellar basketball pedigree as the son of one of the great centers of all time, or the fact that growing up Walton meant being named after his father’s Portland Trailblazer teammate Maurice Lucas, playing pick-up games with Larry Bird, and finding notes in his lunchbox imparting the life-as-basketball lessons that UCLA Coach John Wooden had so impressed upon his father three decades ago.
It’s all of these things, but also much more. When Walton pulled his 30-year old champagne-colored Cadillac convertible – a hand-me-down from his oldest brother that truly suits his easy-going, living-large personality – into Manhattan Beach’s El Porto neighborhood in early September and moved into his apartment on the beach, everything about the Lakers’ new arrival seemed in concordance: Luke seems like the right man at the right place at the right time.
Sitting on a raggedy couch on his back deck a few weeks later, Walton surveyed the beach and thought back to the moment he was chosen on draft day.
“LA,” he said, a smile creeping across his face. “You just can’t beat it.”
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