Tyler Lashbrook: from high school to blogging to the NBA

Jaden Springer joined the Boston Celtics at the trade deadline. Boston dealt a second-round pick to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for the 21-year-old guard. But he wasn’t the first Philly import to jump ship this season.

It was a huge story when Sam Cassell joined the team—a former Celtic champion on the coaching staff to help Mazzulla, who was fresh off his rookie coaching campaign.

But Tyler Lashbrook came over from Philadelphia, too.

Lashbrook has worked with Springer since he was drafted by Philadelphia in 2021. Per Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe, both Cassell and Lashbrook spoke highly of Springer before the Celtics traded for him.

Now, whenever Springer comes out onto the court, Lashbrook is there to work with him. He starts his warm-ups from the mid-range before extending beyond the three-point line, and that’s when the crayon hands come out.

Lashbrook puts two cone-shaped foam mitts onto his hands, which the coaches use to extend their wingspans to match NBA-level competition, and makes every shot Springer takes as tough as possible.

As he does it, he’s keeping score. Every time he misses, Lashbrook gets a point, but when the shot falls, Springer gets one. And Lashbook loves winning. He’s all smiles, messing with Springer as the two go back and forth over the score.

His competitiveness and leadership date back to his high school days, when he began his wildly unique journey to NBA coaching.

A native of Owensboro, Kentucky, Lashbrook’s high school career provided a window into the type of coach he would become.

He was never the star of the show, and the chances of him jumping to the collegiate level were slim, but it was always clear that basketball was in his future.

“I’ve been coaching for 21 years, and there are certain guys that you know will do something in basketball, regardless of their ability,” said Neil Hayden, one of Lashbrook’s coaches during his senior season. “Tyler was a — I would call him a good high school player, but you knew his IQ was even higher than his ability as a player. Like he just had a thirst for basketball.”

That thirst impelled him to keep moving forward in the industry. Despite his unlikely path forward as a player, Lashbrook’s work ethic never wavered. His passion for the game shined through in his dedication.

And while he had his moments throughout high school, the court wasn’t always where his value showed the most. Instead, Lashbrook’s future coaching skills began to rise to the surface.

“In high school, it’s not natural for kids to be vocal,” said Hayden. “That’s something, as a coach, you’ve got to really stress. And most people aren’t willing to ask questions or make comments. And he was always right there. Even on the bench, he was always a huge part of the game.”

In the eyes of his own coaches, he was as much a coach as he was a player.

“As good as he was as a player, he was a bigger asset from a coaching perspective because he provided that extra spark or extra energy or extra pair of eyes to his teammates,” Hayden said. “And yeah, you could see, naturally, that some things just clicked with him.”

Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images

Throughout his coaching career, this trend has continued.

During his time with the 76ers, he contributed to the development of some great young players, and his knowledge of the game was evident.

“He’s very smart, man,” former 76er Shake Milton said. “He watches the game and he kind of looks for things that are a little bit different than what most normal people would look at when they watch basketball. And so, he tries to take those things, and we kind of incorporate them in our workouts.”

Lashbrook even helped Tyrese Maxey on his path to NBA superstardom.

“You get 12 hours to grieve about the game, and then you let it go,” Maxey said at the start of the 2021 season. “Tyler Lashbrook told me yesterday when I went in to workout, he said, ‘You need to have a memory of a goldfish. A goldfish has a short-term memory.’ So hey, we’ll go with that.”

Coaching can be broken down into Xs and Os. Hard work and dedication. Knowing plays and tendencies. But without the ability to communicate those thought processes, it’s useless.

Lashbrook’s adeptness at getting his point across makes his coaching all the more effective. More importantly, his communication comes across the right way.

“This is something that can be overlooked as a coach—he has a good way of, I think, saying what he wants to say, and you’re not coming off from him like upset or mad at him,” Hayden said. “You know his intent is right, and he’s trying to help.”

That skill is matched by Lashbrook’s constant joy. “He was contagious to be around,” Hayden said. “So, he was a lot of fun. He was a joy to be around as a coach.”

For as engaging as Lashbrook is with his coaching style, his competitiveness still finds a way to out. And that was vehemently clear during his final season of high school basketball.

Lashbrook originally attended Daviess County High School in Owensboro, but he transferred ahead of his senior year. But he didn’t just leave Daviess. He left for Apollo High School, their direct rival.

“Two of the biggest rivals in the state of Kentucky for high school basketball is Daviess County and Apollo,” Hayden said.

After three years of battles with Daviess, Lashbrook flipped the script and would now be competing against them.

His personable nature allowed him to immediately make friends with the very team that hated him for years, but on the other side of the coin, Lashbrook was more than comfortable competing against his former friends and teammates.

In fact, he relished that opportunity.

“When we played his former school, Daviess County, he thrived on that game,” Hayden recalled. “We played them twice. And I just remember his energy and his intensity, even on the bench, not even necessarily in the game, was extremely high because he took it personally. Like, he wanted to just freaking win that game.”

With his Daviess County High School friends booing him in the stands, he couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“Just his energy and his enthusiasm to be a part of that game,” Hayden said. “He welcomed the student section being mad at him. Because they were former friends or peers in his school. That stuff didn’t bother him. Like, he laughed.”

Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

With all the work Lashbrook put into the game of basketball, his future in the sport was left up to his own choices. Though he never played at the next level, he still found ways to stay in the space.

And the first way happened to be writing.

Lashbrook wrote for both FanSided and SB Nation prior to his journey in the professional coaching sphere. He ran Nugg Love, FanSided’s Denver Nuggets site, and was a contributor for Orlando Pinstriped Post and A Sea of Blue, SB Nation’s Orlando Magic and Kentucky Wildcats blogs. Glenn Logan, Lashbrook’s editor during his time at A Sea of Blue, calls him an “analytical and talented writer.”

“I have two passions in life: writing and basketball,” Lashbrook wrote in his introductory article for Orlando Pinstriped Post. “I was raised a college hoops fan, but discovered the NBA by the time I was 9 or 10 when I found League Pass on my parents’ cable box. Immediately I loved Tracy McGrady and the Orlando Magic. To this day, I still argue that T-Mac should have been MVP in 2002-03.”

But while Lashbrook may have loved writing, basketball was always number one.

“I started basically when I was a junior in college, writing letters to NBA GMs who probably never saw them or laughed at them,” Lashbrook told a local news station in 2020.

Eventually, he made connections and parlayed them into opportunities.

“I ended up not writing anything. I told the guys this is what I want to do,” Lashbrook said. “I want to hound NBA people to see how they did it. Luckily, I met some people who were nice enough to help me.”

The help he received came in the form of an internship with the 76ers, where he began as a video coordinator. Though it was initially meant to be a short-term gig, Lashbrook stuck around. He worked his way up the ranks, eventually getting the opportunity to coach Summer League for Philadelphia before joining the Celtics in 2023.

Lashbrook played hard, impacted winning, and coached up his teammates at the high school level, and then he wrote his way into the NBA landscape. All of his hard work paid off, but [his] commitment will always remain.

“The Tyler that I know isn’t worried about the title or the recognition that he’s going to get,” Hayden said. “He’s just going to do it because it’s ball, and he’s gonna work his tail off.”