Milwaukee Bucks lead assistant Darvin Ham is set to interview for the vacant LA Clippers head-coaching job this week, a league source told ESPN.
Ham, who is also a finalist for the Indiana Pacers coaching gig, will interview with the Pacers brass in Indiana this week. The previous meetings with the Pacers had been remote.
Clippers assistant coach Ty Lue remains a top choice for the LA job, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. League sources have told Wojnarowski that Golden State Warriors assistant coach Mike Brown also had an interview with the Clippers recently.
Ham, who is Black, has been on Mike Budenholzer‘s staff in Milwaukee for the past two seasons. He had previously worked for five seasons with Budenholzer in Atlanta. The Bucks finished with a regular-season-best 56 wins, but had a disappointing second-round loss to the Miami Heat in the playoffs.
Three Black head coaches — Doc Rivers, Nate McMillan and Alvin Gentry — have been fired since July. Now, there are five Black head coaches in the league, after Rivers was subsequently hired by the Philadelphia 76ers.
During a Sept. 30 news conference in the NBA bubble in Orlando, commissioner Adam Silver said that he knows the league “can do better” in hiring diverse candidates. At the time, there were six vacant head-coaching jobs.
“We’re in discussions with all of those teams about making sure there’s a diverse slate of candidates,” Silver said.
