The NBA coaching carousel began with a bang Wednesday with the blockbuster news surrounding the Boston Celtics.
The Celtics are undergoing quite the shakeup after Danny Ainge’s decision to step down from his position as the team’s president of basketball operations and Brad Stevens will be making the jump to the front office to take Ainge’s place. Now Stevens will be tasked with searching for his own replacement after eight years at the helm and three trips to the Eastern Conference Finals.
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Is it possible that Stevens and the Celtics may look towards the Milwaukee Bucks and the coaching staff that Mike Budenholzer has built?
According to a report from The Athletic’s Jared Weiss (subscription required), outside candidates that expected to draw interest in the Celtics’ head coaching search are Bucks assistant coaches Darvin Ham and Charles Lee.
Of course, the Celtics are in the early stages of forming this search and there are no shortage of candidates already associated with the vacancy, which reportedly includes former Bucks head coach Jason Kidd. But the reality that Stevens is essentially looking for his own replacement and a new voice for the team he’s now in charge of overseeing is quite a fascinating, if not puzzling development for Boston.
Darvin Ham and Charles Lee have been mainstays on the Milwaukee Bucks’ coaching staff
As it pertains to the Bucks as well as Ham and Lee in particular, the two have grown increasingly accustomed to the yearly coaching carousel that takes over the offseason cycle straight away.
Ham has certainly been the most popular candidate of the two after having been linked to such vacancies in Chicago, Indiana and the L.A. Clippers last offseason and left a good impression in the process. Ham even had an interview with his alma mater, Texas Tech University, midway through this season, but took his name out of the run in hopes of landing an NBA coaching gig.
Per ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz’s latest coaching candidates column (subscription required), Ham has all of the characteristics and experiences necessary to take on any job offering that can come about this summer:
Lee, meanwhile, interviewed for such openings in Indiana and Oklahoma City last offseason and Arnovitz previously regarded Lee as a rising coaching star based on anecdotes around the league:
"“Few assistant coaches saw a bigger season-to-season jump in our informal poll than Charles Lee, 35, who’s in his sixth season working under Mike Budenholzer in Atlanta and now Milwaukee. Fans of Lee, who played professionally overseas before spending a couple of years as an equity trader on Wall Street, tout him as a five-tool coach who is every bit as comfortable having meaningful conversations with a backup point guard as he is dining with a team owner. Those who have worked with him say he has an intuitive sense of how to inspire improvement from players but also understands high-level strategy and the preparation required to implement it. He is, in the words of one peer, someone who is “categorically going to be an NBA head coach.”"
Whether the time is coming for either one of Ham or Lee or both this offseason remains to be seen. As of this writing, the Celtics currently have the only head coaching vacancy in the league, but there is some intrigue that Indiana and Washington could follow suit. Maybe even Milwaukee depending on the outcome of this playoff run and the circumstances surrounding it.
There are plenty of layers behind the Bucks’ ongoing playoff run as they prepare to face up against the Brooklyn Nets in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Whether this is the final run for Budenholzer and his long-time assistant coaches in Ham and Lee in Milwaukee is the big question.