Luke Walton is in an excellent situation in Los Angeles. His Lakers just landed the biggest free agent on the market in LeBron James. He's already built a foundation with the young core of Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, and Josh Hart. Now he's tasked with figuring out exactly how the pieces fit together.
But Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka isn't worried about Walton at all. Pelinka told Mike Bresnahan of Spectrum SportsNet that he has complete confidence in Walton. Pelinka said:
“One of the things I said to Luke was ‘One of your greatest strengths as a coach is managing player personalities,’ ” Pelinka said. “I think he’s the perfect guy to keep this locker room unified.”
No doubt, Luke Walton is in a good situation, but he has his work cut out for him. Managing personalities is one of the more important jobs for an NBA coach. When a personality as large as LeBron enters the picture, Walton's job becomes that much more difficult.
But Pelinka and Magic Johnson would not have hired Walton if they didn't think he could handle that responsibility. The plan was always to land a superstar free agent. How Walton can handle these types of players was certainly a factor in the hiring process.
Walton played with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles so coexisting in LA with another star is nothing new to him. It's different now that he's the coach and LeBron is a player, but the front office doesn't think Walton will have much of a problem. In fact, they think he's perfect for the job.
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