At the beginning of last season, due to Steve Kerr‘s health issues, Luke Walton became the interim coach of the Golden State Warriors and guided the team to a historic 24-0 start. Golden State continued winning under Walton and kept it up once Kerr returned, in the process setting an NBA record for most wins in a regular season with 73.
This season as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, Walton has not experienced anything remotely close to the success he had with Golden State. With a record of 21-52, the Lakers are a much different team, that, while talented, are extremely young. But Walton knew what he signed up for when he agreed to coach the Lakers, and the team's growing pains are just part of the process of reshaping the team into his image and playing style.
While the Lakers are just dismal this season, team president Jeannie Buss has been quite happy with Walton. In fact, she wants Walton to be the Lakers coach for the next 10 to 15 years, if he the team doesn't wear him out, that is.
From Buss' appearance on the Forbes Sports Money podcast (transcribed by Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times):
“What was important to me was how he felt about our coach, Luke Walton,” Buss said during a podcast on Forbes Sports Money. “Luke Walton is, he is somebody that I believe can be our coach for the next 10 or 15 years, as long as we don’t kill him.”
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“I saw from my experience with Phil Jackson, if you can build a foundation of players who know the system you want to play, the style you want to play, then you really have [something],” Buss said. “The Spurs have done it the best where they have a core group of players and they just kind of switch pieces as they need to. … I believe that if we build with Luke in mind that he’s somebody that can be around a long time.”
Since parting ways with Phil Jackson in 2011, the Lakers have had an almost revolving door of coaches, going through four different leaders before hiring Walton last summer. Despite the constant losing, Walton has meshed well with the young core of the Lakers and is able to draw on his experience from Golden State and his playing days to motivate and relate to players like D'Angelo Russell, Brandon Ingram and Julius Randle. This is why Buss wants Walton to be their head coach for years to come. Walton is helping to groom and develop the Lakers' young talent, and as Buss herself notes by having him in charge for that long of a time period, it will help out immensely when it comes to building a team culture.
Of course 10 to 15 years coaching just one team is a rather rare occurrence. In the NBA right now, only Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has done that. But Buss believes in Walton, and that show of faith should give him a sense of comfort and the will to continue to push his system and beliefs on the team.
And you never know, perhaps Walton could be like Pop and coach for over a decade with the Lakers. It's not too far fetched, especially since Buss and the team's front office so strongly believes in him.
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