Milwaukee Bucks: Why Darvin Ham is ready to be an NBA head coach

Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Darvin Ham has made the rounds for the various head coaching vacancies around the league and for good reason.

Change is in the air surrounding the Milwaukee Bucks this offseason and that first may come for the Bucks’ coaching staff.

Lead Bucks assistant coach Darvin Ham has been a popular candidate during this year’s frantic and busy coaching carousel. With every coaching vacancy that opens being more high-profile than the last, Ham has been linked to quite a few openings and is reportedly a finalist for the Indiana Pacers’ head coaching position.

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Having transitioned from a player to a coach seamlessly well over a decade ago, Ham has accrued plenty of experience throughout his time in the coaching ranks.

And that experience has come under some of the more modern, forward-thinking coaches in the game today like Mike Budenholzer in Atlanta and Milwaukee and Mike D’Antoni while in Los Angeles.

That goes on top of playing under head coaches like Larry Brown, George Karl and Terry Stotts during his eight-year NBA career.

Between his background as a player as well as the many years he’s spent alongside some of the most successful head coaches working today, Ham holds a diverse background of having the experience of playing in the NBA to now forming and developing the traits and qualities that exist all over the league today.

On that latter point, player development has been the name of the game under Ham’s rise as an assistant and certainly since joining forces with Budenholzer upon his ascent to the head coaching ranks back in the summer of 2013.

And overseeing the continued development of such players like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez has made Ham an essential piece of the puzzle for the Milwaukee Bucks.

While the individual developments of the Bucks’ core players has informed their fast rise over the Budenholzer era, the habits the team has collectively built can certainly be seen on the defensive end. So much of the Bucks’ identity lies on that side of the floor and, as Ham talked about during a interview on Courtside with the Milwaukee Bucks Courtside in February earlier this year, it aligns with his coaching tenets:

"“Defense is something you can get right most nights. Nothing is 100 percent perfect, but there’s a lot of excellence involved in defense and you really give yourself a chance to win if you’re focused on that end of the court. What you can take away from teams, the opportunities you can create for yourself offensively mostly comes from the defensive end. Whether you’re causing a team to turn the ball over, cause them to take a shot they’re not looking for, cause a team to throw a bad pass…It’s one of those things where you can really get it right if you work at it.We work our defense through film studies, individual workouts, team workouts. We spend a lot of time focusing on how we want to approach the game. People get caught in changing things from game to game, but I think one of the biggest reasons why we’ve been so successful is the fact that we plan on how we’re going to use our strengths and what’s the best suitable coverage to defend someone from our point of view. From our skill set, from our personnel. It’s fun. I love it. I love seeing that look in people’s faces when they can’t score or get into the paint, their action or get to their source of offense.”"

For as much Ham has only sharpened his coaching acumen over the years, the camaraderie and the bond that he has consistently built within locker rooms over the years. That has unquestionably carried over into Ham’s stint in Milwaukee under Budenholzer as many players have talked about over the last two seasons.

Ham discussed how he’s been able to foster the many relationships he’s had with players by being clear with what you’re teaching and most importantly, being flexible with players with Stephen Hunt of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in February of 2019:

"“You got to be a bottom line guy,” Ham said. “There’s a lot of gray areas in basketball, but as a coach sometimes you got to speak in terms of black and white. I don’t mean race, just being matter of fact about what you’re explaining to these guys. And if you’re wrong you have to be able to listen too. I feel like you don’t serve your coach in a proper way if you’re not honest with him. You just can’t disagree just for the sake of disagreeing. It has to make sense. But when you’re able to have that honesty with the guy you’re working for, it not only makes you more valuable, it makes the staff more valuable because we’re speaking in honest terms.”"

Ham has certainly been patient in waiting for his chance by continuing to cut his teeth, all while being a key voice among the fruitful foundations that he has played a key part in building across three organizations. If anything, the following that was written by ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz back in March of 2017 perfectly foreshadowed Ham’s trajectory and has followed the footsteps of long-standing running mate:

"“Ham is the kind of guy — not unlike his boss — who could probably be happy for years as a top assistant. But one suspects that, like Budenholzer, he’d be cheating himself if he didn’t throw his hat in the ring at some point for a head-coaching opportunity.”"

Nothing is confirmed yet, but Ham has clearly thrown his hat in the ring and wherever he lands, whether it’s in this coaching cycle or next, what will be the Bucks’ loss will be another organization’s gain.