Luke Walton leading the Lakers with love
By Kevin Jiang
From Golden State to Los Angeles, Arizona Basketball Alum Luke Walton maintains his laid-back approach to leading this year’s young Lakers team.
Ever since Luke Walton stepped foot on a basketball court, his last name has followed him the entire way. As the son of former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton, Luke has used his talent and upbringing in a basketball family to pursue a coaching career in professional basketball. While his career path seems business as usual, the Walton’s have been an anomaly of sorts—his father is known as a hippie, and Luke has expressed that he likes ‘leading by love.‘
The lax approach to coaching as well as the hippie background has led some to question Walton’s approach with the Los Angeles Lakers before the season has even begun. Lakers players have been quick to respond.
Laker’s center Tarik Black has advised that we “Don’t take the mild-mannered-ness, or the hippieish-ness if you want to say, for complacency like he just doesn’t care about what we do. No, he coaches us. He cares a lot about what we do. It’s not a complacent thing; it’s just making sure we’re always instilled with confidence.”
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While Luke’s father certainly had an influence on his upbringing as a young man and basketball player, he was coached by the great Lute Olson during his four-year tenure as an Arizona Wildcat. His time at Arizona helped him enjoy a 10-year career as an NBA player, which overlapped the start of his coaching career as an assistant to former Wildcat Josh Pastner at the University of Memphis.
Walton was shortly after broken into the NBA coaching ranks when former Arizona Wildcat great Steve Kerr took the head coaching job at Golden State and brought Luke in as an assistant coach.
This past season, after Kerr had to take a medical leave from the team, Walton famously led the Warriors to a record-shattering 24-0 undefeated start to the season as an interim head coach. Even though Luke Walton was responsible for coaching a majority of the Warrior’s record-setting 73-9 regular season, head coach Steve Kerr was rewarded with the NBA Coach of the Year award. Check out this video of the two talking about Arizona Basketball:
Walton’s accomplishments have not gone unnoticed as the Los Angeles Lakers quickly hired the former Wildcat and Laker to their head coaching position. After one preseason with the Lakers under his belt, the first-year NBA head coach quickly realizes that this young squad is not like the Warriors group that he had just left. At this point, the Laker’s starting rotation will feature moving parts until they reach a winning combination.
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Given the Los Angeles market, Walton will undoubtedly face high expectations with coaching the Lakers sooner or later. With his coaching pedigree and experience, we at ZonaZealots are more than confident in his ability to lead his young team with love. BearDown Luke!