Luke Walton has made it no secret how much he loves his fellow University of Arizona alumni. So much so that two of the five men on his coaching staff with the Los Angeles Lakers went to U of A. It used to be three until the New York Knicks swooped up Jud Buechler last summer.
Walton still hasn’t found a replacement for Buechler, and it’s not for a lack of trying. Over the summer, Walton recruited another former Wildcat to join his coaching staff: Richard Jefferson.
When Jefferson temporarily retired in 2016, there were rumors that he asked Walton to join his coaching staff, but Jefferson told the crew at EPSN’s “The Jump” that such a description of events is not exactly how it went down:
“So we’re on a fantasy football chain and there’s a bunch of us and somebody said ‘Hey Luke, are you going to put Richard on your staff’ and he said ‘No, because if he retires, he’s an idiot and I can’t have idiots on my staff.