Once Luke Walton was hired as the next head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, many wondered who would be on his coaching staff moving forward.
It appears that one former NBA head coach and Lakers assistant under Phil Jackson has emerged as a candidate for Walton’s staff.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, Brian Shaw is at the top of a short list of candidates for Walton:
New head coach Luke Walton is starting to construct his coaching staff, and the most prominent on his short list of candidates is Brian Shaw, league sources said.
After Jackson left the Lakers in the summer of 2011, Shaw was considered the obvious choice to replace the 11-time NBA champion head coach. Shaw quickly became the fan favorite among the coaching candidates for the Lakers at that time, but the team decided to go in another direction to step out of Jackson’s shadow by hiring Mike Brown.
Brown, much like Mike D’Antoni and Byron Scott, didn’t last very long in Los Angeles with the team firing him only five games into the 2012-13 NBA season. D’Antoni took over for Brown lasting two seasons before resigning and paving the way for Scott, who also coached the team for only two years before the team recently parted ways with him.
After winning three straight NBA titles as a player alongside Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, Shaw eventually transitioned into a coaching role for the Lakers. Shaw was an assistant coach from 2005 to 2011 and then made a name for himself as an assistant under Frank Vogel with the Indiana Pacers for two seasons before becoming the head coach of the Denver Nuggets in 2013.
Shaw’s stint with the Nuggets was short-lived with the former Phil Jackson pupil coaching about a season and a half before being let go in March of 2015. Shaw spent a lot of time with Walton in Los Angeles and would be an intriguing addition to the coaching staff.
