GM: Walton’s youth ‘something new’ for Lakers

8:59 PM ET

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — The Los Angeles Lakers are plenty excited about Luke Walton, but the team’s brass believes the Golden State Warriors assistant will need time to adjust to his first NBA head-coaching position, especially as the 36-year-old Walton is set to become the youngest coach in the league while also taking over a rebuilding team that posted a franchise-worst 17-65 record last season.

As such, on Friday, Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said that Walton, whom the Lakers agreed to hire last week, will endure “some bumps in the road,” but the team believes Walton “is a good bet going forward” and that “we think he’s going to get better year to year.”

Kupchak spoke at the team’s practice facility after Walton signed his contact with the Lakers on Thursday night. According to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein, Walton agreed to a five-year deal, with four years guaranteed, worth up to $6 million a year plus incentives.

Kupchak said Walton was the first of several candidates the Lakers were scheduled to interview, but after meeting with Walton last Thursday in Oakland, California, the Lakers canceled their other interviews and soon offered him the position.

An announcement was made the next day that Walton had accepted the job.

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Walton won’t join the Lakers until the Warriors’ postseason run ends. The Warriors are chasing their second consecutive championship, and if they reach that point, Walton won’t assume his new post until June.

There were multiple reasons why the Lakers moved so quickly to hire Walton, one of them being that they didn’t want to risk losing the hottest free agent coach on the market to another team that might lure him away.

“With the openings in the NBA at the time, and the openings that we thought might come about, once we finished the interview we decided quickly that he was our first choice,” Kupchak said. “Why wait? Just get it done. And that’s what we did.”

The illustrious Lakers have typically hired veteran coaches, so choosing Walton marks a change of pace.

“I think more than ever, I think the front office will be more involved with development of a young coach,” Kupchak said. “As long as I can remember we’ve had veteran coaches here, I guess since Del Harris. Del Harris, Phil Jackson, Rudy Tomjanovic, Mike Brown, Mike D’Antoni, Byron Scott. So this is something new for us and I expect to be more involved day-to-day than we’ve ever been in terms of the front office and what takes place down in the locker room.”

Kupchak listed several reasons for the Lakers to hire Walton, including his coaching inexperience, though Walton retired from playing in the NBA just three years ago and two years ago was a part-time assistant with the Lakers’ D-League team, the D-Fenders.

“Believe it or not, the fact that he really doesn’t have a lot of head coaching experience is a positive,” Kupchak said. “We get to work with somebody …

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