Lakers News: Fresh Suns Hire May Keep Beloved Assistant Coach In LA
Former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Frank Vogel is putting together the bench for his new club, the Phoenix Suns.
That includes Kevin Young, who had been the team's associate head coach under prior Suns coach Monty Williams since 2020. Young had interviewed to replace Williams as Phoenix's new head coach. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Young will now stick around on the most lucrative assistant coach contract in the league, earning $2 million per year.
Young had been one of three finalists for the Suns head coaching gig, but this is a solid consolation prize.
His return to the Suns bench next year could mean good news for your Lakers, as beloved assistant LA coach Phil Handy may just opt to stick around after all. Handy had been considered a prospect to leave for Vogel's bench this summer, as he had previously served under Vogel from 2019-22 in Los Angeles, winning a title for the Lakers in 2020.
Handy, 51, has worked under three different LA head coaching regimes. He was a developmental coach for Mike Brown (who just won 2023 Coach of the Year Honors for his work with the Sacramento Kings) from 2011-13, and subsequently worked for Vogel and now Darvin Ham in LA. He also served as an assistant coach under Brown, David Blatt and Tyronn Lue with the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2013-18.
With Lue at the helm, those Cavs, led by now-Laker LeBron James, won the 2016 championship in a seven-game comeback over the Golden State Warriors. Handy hopped over to the Toronto Raptors for their 2018-19 season, netting another trophy for his efforts under then-head coach Nick Nurse.
Handy has won three championships between his wins with Cleveland, Toronto and most recently Los Angeles. It remains to be seen if he'll opt to run it back with LA this summer or move on, but where Handy goes, titles generally seem to follow.
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