The Los Angeles Lakers confirmed Byron Scott as the new coach of the team on Monday. This is a much anticipated appointment for the Lakers, as it has been three months since the team has had a head coach, after former head coach mike D’Antoni resigned as coach on April 30th.
Scott will be introduced as the new Lakers head coach at the Lakers training facility at a news conference on Tuesday; he will sign a deal worth $ 17 million over four years. The hiring of Scott has been endorsed by the Lakers Kobe Bryant, after the Lakers legend said that Scott would be his first choice if it was his decision to make. Scott is the Los Angeles Lakers fifth coach in the last three years and beat other high profile coaches such as Lionel Hollins and George Karl to the position, Scott was considered to be the front runner since the start of the summer but leaders of the Lakers organisation Jerry Buss and GM Mitch Kupckak have been more focused on the free agency period and on getting the right player in the draft in the shape of Julius Randle.
Byron Scott will of course be a fan favourite after his years with Lakers as a player where he played for a total of 11 seasons but most of those 11 seasons were in a 10 year consecutive stint with the Lakers. Scott joined the NBA after being drafted by Lakers rivals the San Diego Clippers at no.4 in the 1983 NBA draft, but was then traded to the Lakers for point guard Norm Dixon. Scott was a shooting guard and a very good three point shooter, played with Lakers greats like Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He also played for other NBA teams such as the Indiana Pacers and the Vancouver Grizzlies and had a short career in Europe where he played for Greek side Panathinaikos where he was also successful in his later years as a player.
Byron Scott’s coaching career started with an assistant’s job with the Sacramento Kings which lasted for two seasons, after leaving the Kings for the New Jersey Nets he would get his first head coaching job in the NBA, with nets he was reasonably successful taking the nets to two NBA finals appearances in just five seasons with the team, one of his finals appearances was against his actually against the Lakers in the 2001/02 season where they lost to the Lakers in the finals. Scott took the nets back to the finals just a year later but lost again but this time to the San Antonio Spurs.
Scott then moved on to the New Orleans Hornets where he coached players such as Chris Paul, he had some success with New Orleans, but only divisional success, people began to question Scott’s ability to coach defence. Scott was relieved of his duties as coach on November 12th 2009 and then took time out of coaching and became a studio analyst for the NBA on ESPN.
Scott was fired by the Hornets in 2009, just one season after he was named NBA coach of the year 2008. This led to teams wanting Scott as there head coach; Scott was out of the NBA for just under 8 months when he was named head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. A couple of days after Scott was given the job the cavaliers lost its franchise player in LeBron James which made Scott’s challenge twice as hard. After the loss of Lebron James the Cavaliers endured a terrible season going 19-63 the second worst record in the league, only bettering the Minnesota Timberwolves. The team made improvements in Scott’s second season after the team drafted young point guard Kyrie Irving from Duke University, the young point guard led the team to improve a whole 21 victories. Even with the team showing improvement the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise organisation went in another direction.
After being fired by the Cavaliers, Scott went back in to a media job as a television analyst with Time Warner Cable Sports Net, Scott has also be focusing on his charity work for the Byron Scott children’s fund, which is a non-profit organization which has raised more than $ 15 million over the past decade.
Byron Scott has probably his most pressure head coaching job in his career as he takes over the role as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, a position in which fans of the Lakers always expect to win. He is taking over a team which struggle to win last season going 27-55, the team has shown some promise of improvement this off-season by adding talent such as point guard Jeremy Lin, a player in which Byron Scott has admitted he is a fan of, Carlos Boozer and Ed Davis have been brought in to replace the production lost by the team losing Pau Gasol in free agency this summer, the team has also re-signed players such as Nick Young or Swaggy P as he known by the Lakers fans. Scott has also has a new piece in Julius Randle the young power forward from the University of Kentucky, who showed a lot of promise in this year’s summer league.
The Lakers fans are excited for the coming season under the new coach Byron Scott that his passion for the Lakers organisation and team can lead the team to success in the future, Scott having played and grew up very close to the Laker organisation in Inglewood California will coach the team with that something special that they didn’t have last season.
The Lakers supporters will expect at least a 40 win season and with Scott’s coaching record being 416 wins and 521 losses it could be possible. All Laker fans including myself are hoping for a great year under Coach Scott.
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