The Lakers got it right in hiring Darvin Ham as head coach

The Lakers long, long search for a head coach culminated on Friday with the team reportedly hiring Darvin Ham. While the team still has not officially confirmed the hiring, congratulatory messages from LeBron James and Magic Johnson — the latter of which was an advisor in the hiring process — and Giannis Antetokounmpo all certainly indicate it’s a matter of when, not if, the Lakers make it official.

On today’s episode of “Can U Dig It,” a podcast by the Silver Screen & Roll network, Christian and I react to the news of Ham’s hiring after having multiple days to process it. The team conducted a very thorough search and ultimately landed on the candidate both of us have felt was the No. 1 realistic option for some time now.

The focus now switches to who Ham will surround himself with as he begins building out his coaching staff. We look at some of the names that will likely come up in the process including Terry Stotts, Kenny Atkinson and Steve Clifford as well as other less likely options like Phil Handy or James Borrego.

There’s also a discussion on whether giving Ham full autonomy on hiring his staff as a first-year head coach is too much of a risk given how the Lakers’ last first-time head coach, Luke Walton, did not do a great job surrounding himself with veteran, qualified voices on staff.

You can listen to all that and more on our latest episode in the player embedded below, and to make sure you don’t miss a single one moving forward, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude and Christian at @RadRivas. And for a short-form recap pod, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and gets you ready for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast feed.