Draymond Green gave new Los Angeles Lakers head coach Darvin Ham an extremely emotional and fitting tribute after the Michigan native was named the new head coach for one of the most storied franchises in all of the NBA. Ham is a former player who has been grinding through the league as an assistant coach for years. The Lakers will be his first head coaching opportunity.
There has been a lot of chatter around whether Ham deserves the opportunity as a rookie head coach, but Draymond is a massive endorser of the new hiring. Both Ham and Draymond studied at the Saginaw High School in Michigan, so for Draymond to see someone from his community hold a seat as the head coach of the Lakers means more than people will understand.
Green decided to go in-depth on his podcast about the hiring of Ham, showering the new coach with praises and talking about how he attended Darvin Ham’s basketball camps in Michigan growing up, hoping to one day be an NBA player:
“To see a guy like Darvin Ham from Saginaw, Michigan, went to Saginaw High School, the same place yours truly went to, after Darv obviously. To see him as the head coach of the Lakers, man that’s so much bigger than it may seem to the average basketball fan. The average fan wants to pick apart ‘oh this guy wasn’t a head coach’ or ‘he’s tough and he can stand up to Russ and LeBron’. For me, that means so much more as a kid for Saginaw who attended the Darvin Ham camp as a kid in hopes that I could one day play in the NBA. The head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, a kid for Saginaw? That’s groundbreaking man.”
“If he can become the head coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, I can for sure become a head coach in this league.”
Draymond breaks down the hiring in terms of the X’s and O’s that Ham brings to the Lakers and how he’d be a great fit on the team. Considering his experience under the likes of Gregg Popovich and becoming an NBA Champion with the Milwaukee Bucks, Ham knows what it takes to be a championship-winning coach.
Hopefully, he can live up to the grand expectations in LA and deliver on the promise of a championship that is automatically expected by the fanbase when you sign for the franchise.
