LOS ANGELES LAKERS
New Lakers assistant coaches Nate McMillan and Scott Brooks have a dicey history with each other from their playing days.
The Los Angeles Lakers hired new assistant coaches Nate McMillan and Scott Brooks for JJ Redick’s staff. While the two are experienced coaches, they have a history with each other as players. They once got into a fight during a game in the 1993 Playoffs between McMillan’s Sonics and Brooks’ Rockets.
The fight occurred during the 1993 Western Conference semifinals, as the SuperSonics took on the Rockets.
The series went seven games, as the Sonics would end up defeating the Rockets. So McMillan got the last laugh in the end. But it has been 31 years since their scuffle, so it is safe to assume that the two have put the incident behind them.
Both players eventually found their way in the NBA as coaches, finding great success across multiple teams, and getting the opportunity to coach some of the best players in the history of the NBA. JJ Redick is lucky to have their experience on his staff, and he will need it, having to balance the egos and players of the Lakers squad.
Scott Brooks And Nate McMillan Bring Lots Of Experience To The Lakers
Nate McMillan would end up coaching the SuperSonics both as assistant and head coach. He left the SuperSonics in 2005, funnily enough, one year before Brooks would join them, to become the Trail Blazers head coach.
McMillan would coach the Trail Blazers for seven years, overseeing some difficult times for them, even leading them to a 50-win season multiple times. But he was never able to get them out of the first round of the NBA playoffs.
McMillan would leave the Trail Blazers in 2012, and join the Indiana Pacers as an assistant coach in 2013 under head coach Frank Vogel. In 2016, the Pacers named him the head coach after Frank Vogel left the team.
He would do well to guide the Pacers through some turbulent seasons, especially after Paul George left, and he helped Domantas Sabonis and Victor Oladipo become All-Stars in 2018. Despite extending his contract, the Pacers fired him in 2020, allowing him to join the Atlanta Hawks as an assistant coach.
McMillan would quickly be named head coach after Lloyd Pierce was fired. With the Hawks, McMillan would find his greatest success as head coach, reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021, where they would lose to the Milwaukee Bucks. But that success quickly dissipated as the Hawks dipped in form, and McMillan would be fired in the middle of the 2022-23 NBA season.
Scott Brooks would also eventually become a coach in the NBA, starting his NBA coaching career as an assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets.
He would then take the same position for the Sacramento Kings, before joining the Sonics as an assistant coach. Brooks was named the new head coach after the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City to rebrand as the Thunder.
He would lead the new generation of the Thunder, as he was the head coach for Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden as they took the team to the NBA Finals. Brooks would eventually leave the Thunder in 2015.
Brooks wouldn’t take another job for a whole year, coming back to the NBA in 2016 as the head coach of the Wizards. He was trusted with helping John Wall and Bradley Beal develop and lead the team to playoff contention, which he did in three out of his five seasons there.
After leaving the Wizards in 2021, he became an assistant coach for the Trail Blazers and stayed there for three years until joining the Lakers.
Both coaches will now be trusted to guide first-time head coach JJ Redick, as he looks to bring the Lakers back to the contending team they expect to be. With the experience of both coaches now on his staff, Redick will feel confident about implementing his ideas into the team.
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