Brian Shaw Named Lakers Assistant Coach: Contract Details, Reaction

The Los Angeles Lakers and Brian Shaw have finalized terms on a deal to make Shaw an assistant on Luke Walton's staff when the latter assumes head coaching duties.

The Lakers announced the hire Friday, but Los Angeles Times' Brad Turner and the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina first reported the talks on May 21.

When the Denver Nuggets hired Shaw in 2013, he was one of the hottest commodities on the head coaching market, having spent eight years on the bench as an assistant. He also learned under one of the greatest head coaches of all time, Phil Jackson.

Shaw's tenure couldn't have gone more poorly, though. He was gone after two years, with the Nuggets going 56-85 under his stewardship.

Shaw struggled to connect with his players, and he did himself no favors when he spent his postgame interview following a January 2015 defeat criticizing his team:

Things reached a comical nadir when Rachel Nichols, who was then working for Turner Sports (via Deadspin's Kevin Draper) reported Shaw was reading books about relating to millennials and taking the players' phones away from them an hour before games in order to get through to them.

"If you don't have a coach that believes in you, then what's the point of going out there and playing?" Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried asked in September, per Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post. "If your coach doesn't have faith in you and puts you out in the fire against all these great players, you're going to get torched."

While Shaw was his own worst enemy at times, ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne hit on an important point:

Bleacher Report's Dan Favale also highlighted Denver's roster failings as it attempted to shift away from former head coach George Karl's uptempo style:

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Never mind that the Nuggets were built to run and employed a star-level point guard in Ty Lawson. The ball would be taken out of his hands and thrown into the low post, where Denver would grind its way to victory, adhering to more traditional tenets.

Except the Nuggets' on-court personnel has never once embodied tradition. They've never made any wholesale changes to the roster—not ones that advanced a new identity.

They signed the explosive Nate Robinson. They said goodbye to the uber-athletic Andre Iguodala. They reacquired and re-dealt Arron Afflalo. They traded Timofey Mozgov and McGee. They invested tens of millions of dollars in Kenneth Faried, a high-octane forward with virtually no interior presence on offense.

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To a certain extent, becoming an assistant coach is a step down for Shaw after his time with the Nuggets.  Then again, going the assistant route might be Shaw's quickest avenue to becoming a head coach again.

Alvin Gentry was an associate head coach for the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors before the New Orleans Pelicans hired him for their top job ahead of the 2015-16 season. Both Terry Stotts and Dwane Casey parlayed their years as assistants with the Dallas Mavericks into head coaching opportunities as well.

If Shaw can help Walton turn the Lakers around in 2016-17, his stock throughout the league will rise, and he'll be in a much stronger position this time next year to compete for the top head coaching vacancies.

For Walton, hiring Shaw is an easy decision. Not only will Shaw's experience be invaluable for a first-year head coach, but the two already have a rapport with each other from when Walton was a member of the Lakers roster.

Especially with Kobe Bryant's retirement, the Lakers are relying on a number of younger stars such as Jordan Clarkson, Julius Randle, D'Angelo Russell and No. 2 pick Brandon Ingram to continue their rebuild.

The same problems Shaw experienced getting through to his roster could crop up again in Los Angeles, but he's not running the team this time around. His day-to-day interactions with the players won't be the same as they were in Denver.

Shaw has already shown he's a quality NBA assistant coach, and there's no reason to expect that to change during his second stint with the Lakers.

Walton will have a difficult job ahead as he builds Los Angeles into a playoff contender again. But between the team's young squad and what is looking to be a strong coaching staff, Lakers fans have reason to be optimistic about the future.