Byron Scott calls Los Angeles Lakers job ‘a dream’
When the Los Angeles Lakers hired Byron Scott to be their next head coach, Scott realized one of his dreams. Scott started his playing career there in 1983 and remained a member of the Lakers until 1993, winning three championships along the way.
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“The one thing I will say is that this has been a dream of mine for so long,” Scott said via Yannis Koutroupis of Basketball Insiders. “It’s a dream come true to be here sitting and talking to you guys today and be introduced as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. As I told Mitch and Jim in our meetings, the passion and the love that I have for this organization is second to none. The only thing I regret is that Dr. Buss isn’t here today. He’s somebody who showed a lot of love and confidence in me back in the day, and a guy that you could call any time, a guy that could call you any time and you could talk to him about anything. Like, basketball, money, anything. I just wish he was here today. But as I told Jim and Jeanie, I’m going to do everything in my power to make those guys proud, the Buss family proud, and do everything I can to bring this team back to where we know it should be. This organization is all about championships. Period. We don’t look at Western Conference finals, Western Conference championships. We look at championships. We know we have some work ahead of us, I’m excited. Just thrilled to death. I’m eager, and just ready to get to work. I know it’s going to be a challenge, but I look forward do it. I love challenges anyway, so this is going to be fun.”
The hire of Scott has pleased many others as well. Scott has a good relationship with Lakers’ star guard Kobe Bryant and has had success in the postseason in the past despite a rather poor regular season record. Scott has coached the New Jersey Nets (Brooklyn), New Orleans Hornets (Pelicans) and Cleveland Cavaliers. He has a career regular season record of 416-521 and is 33-24 in the postseason.
Of course, Scott took over the Cavaliers when LeBron James left for the Miami, so he gets a bit of a pass for the futility there.