Los Angeles Lakers: How former Laker players fare as head coach

Luke Walton

• 2016-2019
• Record: 98-148
• Playoff games: 0

Luke Walton‘s Los Angeles Lakers coaching career was supposed to outshine his playing career. Considered an intelligent basketball player and a coach on the floor by none other Phil Jackson, Walton’s bad back betrayed him and his playing career ended with a whimper after 10 years.

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His potential as a coach was due to his time as an assistant to Steve Kerr with the Golden State Warriors. When Kerr’s bad back sidelined him a year after winning a championship, Walton, not the veteran coach Alvin Gentry, was given the head job on an interim basis.

All Walton did was coach the team to the greatest start in NBA history as the team set a record going 24-0. By the time Kerr returned Walton’s record stood at 39-4.

With the Lakers, there were no such highlights, though the team did improve every season during his tenure, in three years with the Lakers they never won 40 games and missed the playoffs every year.

This past season was probably the worse, with LeBron James in tow the Lakers fortunes were supposed to finally turn around and instead it was a disaster. Injuries, dissension, and dysfunction reigned and Walton was fired to end the season.

If the Los Angeles Lakers in fact do hire Ty Lue, Laker fans better hope he looks more like Pat Riley and less like the last two former players to coach the team.