Lakers officially hire Zach Guthrie as G League coach

The Lakers have found their new G League coach in Zach Guthrie, the team announced on Tuesday.

Roughly a month after parting ways with Dane Johnson, the Lakers have reportedly found their next G League coach. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Zach Guthrie will step in as the new head coach of the South Bay Lakers.

Guthrie has been an NBA assistant since 2016.

The Lakers have also officially announced the signing as well.

While Guthrie’s coaching career began in 2016, he has been in the NBA pre-dating that, spending time in San Antonio and Orlando as an assistant video coordinator and manager of advanced scouting, respectively.

Guthrie then joined the Jazz as an assistant coach from 2016-2020, moved to the Mavericks for one season and then has been with the Wizards since 2021. Guthrie has also twice been a Summer League head coach with the Jazz and Wizards.

Redick’s half season with the Mavs in the final year of his career overlapped with Guthrie’s one season in Dallas. That likely led to the connection between the two, leading to this hiring.

With the Lakers focusing on player development, Guthrie’s approach to that is interesting. On the podcast “The Basketball Podcast” hosted by Chris Oliver, Guthrie shared his thoughts on player development.

“We want to have these boutique, 1-on-1 sessions [where] everything’s about [the player] and his development and his growth. But you have to understand how that transfers to the team, to the 5-on-5 element. We take so much of this out of context and we get so lost in this individual skill when it’s about how does it transfer to the team and how can we get as much team growth as possible . . That’s what I mean by the Holistic Approach.”

Guthrie went on to discuss the importance of group workouts and live workouts versus individual skill workouts in the podcast as well.

For those keeping track this summer, the Lakers have also taken a different approach to player development that seems to be very close to the idea that Guthrie is talking about.

Workouts have featured more live basketball — one on one and three on three — than past summers when the focus was more on individual, noncompetitive work.

This could be one step of the player development changes that Redick vowed to make when he took the job this summer, a change the organization has tied to the changing salary cap rules. But, honestly, the changes probably were overdue.

If you’re looking for synergy from the top down in a franchise, this appears to be a great hire in that regard.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.