Clippers’ Tyronn Lue breaks silence on rumors of long-term Los Angeles extension

Tyronn Lue’s coaching career

Whether the Los Angeles Clippers and Tyronn Lue can come to a contract extension — Lue has two more years left on his current contract — remains to be seen. But what is already proven is that Lue is one of the best coaches in the NBA and would certainly garner great interest from numerous teams around the team, including the Los Angeles Lakers, with whom he could reunite with LeBron James.

A native of Mexico, Missouri, Lue played college basketball at Nebraska before being drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the 1998 NBA Draft. On draft night, he was traded from Denver to the Lakers, with whom he spent the first three seasons of his career and won two championships. He would bounce around the league for the next nearly decade, playing for the Washington Wizards (alongside Michael Jordan), Orlando Magic, Houston Rockets, Atlanta Hawks, Dallas Mavericks, and Milwaukee Bucks before entering coaching.

He initially joined the Boston Celtics’ staff, reuniting with his former coach Doc Rivers. When Rivers was traded to the Clippers, Lue followed him to Los Angeles, where he spent just a season as an assistant before becoming the associate head coach on David Blatt’s Cleveland Cavaliers coaching staff. When Blatt was fired in January 2016, despite a 30-11 record, Lue got his first opportunity as head coach, of which he took full advantage. In June, just five months after the coaching change, Lue and the Cavs overcame a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors to win the franchise’s first-ever NBA Championship.

James left Cleveland in 2018, though, and after just six games in the 2018-19 season, Lue was fired by the Cavaliers. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the Clippers and worked for Rivers until October 2020, when he was promoted to head coach following Rivers’ departure for the Philadelphia 76ers. In his first season as Clippers head coach, Lue led the team to the first conference finals appearance in franchise history despite Kawhi Leonard suffering a season-ending in the second round.

Since then, the Clippers have continued to struggle with injuries, which have severely limited their potential. The team lost in the Play-In and missed the playoffs in 2022 and has been knocked out of the postseason in the first round each of the last two seasons, in part due to Leonard being limited to just two games both years.

There appears to be a consensus, though, that the Clippers’ failures are not a result of Lue, which has made him a hot commodity around the league. So if the Clippers can’t extend Lue, some other team likely will swoop in to nab the sought-after coach.