Brian Shaw Reportedly to Be Lakers Assistant Coach: Contract Details, Reaction

The Los Angeles Lakers and Brian Shaw were finalizing terms on a deal Saturday to make Shaw an assistant on Luke Walton’s staff when Walton assumes head coaching duties, per the Los Angeles Times’ Brad Turner and the Los Angeles Daily News’ Mark Medina.

When the Denver Nuggets hired Shaw in 2013, he was one of the hottest commodities on the head coaching market, having spent eight years on the bench as an assistant. He also learned under one of the greatest head coaches of all time, Phil Jackson.

Shaw’s tenure couldn’t have gone more poorly, though. He was gone after two years, with the Nuggets going 56-85 under his stewardship.

Shaw struggled to connect with his players, and he did himself no favors when he spent his postgame interview following a January 2015 defeat criticizing his team:

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Things reached a comical nadir when Rachel Nichols, then working for Turner Sports (via Deadspin’s Kevin Draper) reported Shaw was reading books about relating to millennials and taking the players’ phones away from them an hour before games in order to get through to them.

“If you don’t have a coach that believes in you, then what’s the point of going out there and playing?” Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried asked in September, per Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post. “If your coach doesn’t have faith in you and puts you out in the fire against all these great players, you’re going to get torched.”

While Shaw was his own worst enemy at times, …

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