The Los Angeles Lakers made an addition to their front office earlier this week, hiring former University of Virginia head coach Tony Bennett as a draft advisor. It’s one of the first outside additions made by new majority owner Mark Walter, with the hope being that head coach JJ Redick and company can lean on his experience finding hard-nosed players to restock the Lakers’ young core.
Bennett was the head coach at Virginia from 2009-2024. In that time, they won the ACC six times, made it to the Sweet 16 or farther three times and won the 2019 National Championship. He, between his time at Virginia and Washington State, got players like Klay Thompson, De’Andre Hunter, Malcolm Brogdon and Trey Murphy III to the NBA.
Redick, who played at Duke from 2002-06, is not directly familiar with Bennett’s coaching in the ACC. However, his reputation speaks for itself, and he spoke about his excitement to work with the legendary head coach, via Benjamin Royer of The Southern California News Group:
JJ Redick on the Lakers org hiring Tony Bennett on Wednesday as a draft advisor:
"I'm very excited about Tony and getting to work with him. … It's one additional basketball resource, and I'm very excited to see us build out all our resources over the next four to six months."
— Benjamin Royer (@thebenroyer) February 27, 2026
The Bennett hire comes shortly after the Lakers let go of most of the remainder of their scouting department with the plan for Walter, Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka to rebuild it. This shows that, on the surface, they at least have an understanding of the types of players they’re missing and who might be best equipped to help find those players.
Redick and Bennett seem as though they would work well together, as they both have the passionate mentality that drives them to need to improve and make their team better. Bennett, after all, was the coach who lost as a No. 1 seed in the first round, only to turn around and win it all the next year.
They now have a couple months to build out the rest of their scouting department before the NBA Draft in June, when the Lakers will have a chance to begin replenishing their young reserves.
Lakers’ Lon Rosen explains decision to raise ticket prices
One other recent Lakers addition — president of business operations Lon Rosen — made the decision to raise prices for season tickets. The decision was met with criticism, but he explained it by saying that the demand is simply too high, as evidenced by the price of single-game tickets on resale sites.
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