Lakers reportedly fire entire assistant coaching staff, including Phil Handy

The Lakers are reportedly completely clearing house with the coaching staff, including longtime assistant Phil Handy.

The Lakers are completely clearing house when it comes to the coaching staff. Along with firing Darvin Ham on Friday, the team fired the entire assistant coaching staff, most notable among those being longtime assistant Phil Handy.

Handy had been an assistant with the team since 2019, his second tenure with the Lakers.

Handy had established himself as one of the most respected assistant coaches in the NBA. After being brought in by Frank Vogel, Handy stayed with the team under Ham alongside a new coaching staff.

While some might view this as a tough blow, it was likely an inevitable one. It’s rare for an assistant to stay with a team when a new head coach is hired. Handy doing that once spoke likely to his relationship with LeBron James and Anthony Davis more than anything.

However, it was remarkably unlikely he was going to do that a third time. And after publicly declaring he wanted to become a head coach during the franchise’s last search and then being given virtually no consideration for the job, it just didn’t seem likely he was going to stay with the team again.

If we want to get brutally honest, Handy was also part of two coaching staffs that had more failures than wins over the last two seasons. In no way am I putting that at his feet, but it seems his bread and butter is player development — where he’s one of the best in the league — and not as a scheme guy.

None of this is to say the next coach couldn’t bring Handy back on his staff, but he won’t be a holdover this time around.

Outside of Handy, realistically, there likely wasn’t going to be anyone else kept on the staff. Most of the assistants hired by Ham had direct connections with him either in Atlanta or Milwaukee. And none of them had any head coaching experience, which was initially what was reported would be the case when Ham was hired.

In all, this was the likely outcome, even if it wasn’t the most desired outcome. Having a clean slate to work with also makes the job more appealing to a new coach coming in, which has not always been something the Lakers have done heading into a coaching search.

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