The Los Angeles Lakers have reached a four-year contract with Darvin Ham, assistant coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, to make him their new head coach, reported ESPN on Friday.

Ham was working under Mike Budenholzer and helped the Bucks win their first NBA Championship in 50 years last season. In his interview with the Lakers on Thursday, according to ESPN, he impressed the purple and gold with his "stature and toughness" as well as his coaching experience of star players. Ham worked as an assistant coach at the Lakers in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons.

Lakers franchise player LeBron James welcomed Ham and expressed his excitement on Twitter. He will turn 38 years old after the 2022-23 season begins and still has a lot to chase, both as an individual player and as a team leader.

A huge part of Ham's career as an assistant coach was with Budenholzer, both at the Atlanta Hawks and Bucks. Multiple coaches who shared similar experience have been doing well in the league: Taylor Jenkins of the Memphis Grizzlies, Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz and (assistant coach) Kenny Atkinson of the Golden State Warriors.

Of course, Ham will have a much more complicated situation to deal with, as the Lakers have an expensive but uneven squad made of aged James, vulnerable Anthony Davis and struggling Russell Westbrook. ESPN revealed that the purple and gold asked every coach they interviewed how he plans to make the awkward combination work. Ham's answer to that must have been great for him to get the job, but there is a big difference between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it.

Furthermore, both Jenkins and Snyder had promising youngsters to begin with and not too much pressure for fruit in the first several years since they took over. Ham does have the first advantage. The Lakers traded away almost all of their future assets to land Davis and Westbrook and are unlikely to have any first-round pick until 2026.

The Lakers have never been the most patient team in the NBA. Neither James nor the team wants to waste his last good years. They want to win at the moment. Ham's predecessor Frank Vogel led the purple and gold to win the NBA Championship in 2020, but was fired two seasons after that.

The Lakers missed the play-in tournament this season with a 33-49 record. It shouldn't be too hard for Ham to help the team do better than that in the next season, but what goal the team sets for him to meet is a different question.