Tyler Lashbrook’s road to the NBA coaching world couldn’t be more unique. The Maine Celtics head coach, currently in the midst of a playoff run, went from high school ball to assisting with college scout teams to blogging to emailing NBA GMs various scouting reports in hopes of landing a gig. It’s a story worth telling.
During the Boston Celtics’ 2024 Championship run, that was the goal. Chats with Lashbrook’s high school coaches and trainers painted an incredible picture of how he battled his way up the ranks despite never playing ball past the high school level. But then a text pinged my phone.
Photos of two high school basketball rosters alongside a message: “I need to talk to you.”
Kim Swift, a long-time basketball trainer in Owensboro, Kentucky, Lashbrook’s hometown, sent the text. We had chatted about Lashbrook’s play at Daviess County High School, where Swift was an assistant coach during his senior season.
“Of course. Is there a problem?” I responded.
“Yes. Is now a good time?”
The rosters showed two separate lists of players, both including Tyler Lashbrook. One displayed Lashbrook as a senior, the other as a junior. But that’s where the small discrepancies began to pile up. One roster showed Lashbrook as number 21. On the other, he donned 22. It could have simply been a number switch-up from year to year, but that wasn’t the case.
At the top of the box score, the final straw shined bright. Both rosters were for the 2009-10 season, but one was for Daviess County High School, and the other was for Apollo High School.
Swift had been speaking about the wrong Tyler Lashbrook.
The wrong Tyler Lashbrook in Owensboro, Kentucky. (2010 population estimate 57,506)
The wrong Tyler Lashbrook who played high school basketball in Owensboro, Kentucky.
The wrong Tyler Lashbrook in Owensboro, Kentucky, who played basketball for Daviess Country High School in the late 2000s.
There were (are) two Tyler Lashbrooks.
Celtics coach Tyler Lashbrook and his friend, Tyler Lashbrook
A quick phone call with Swift led to this realization. I sent him a photo of the now-Maine head coach, and he confirmed that it was not the player he coached in high school.
The odds of a name mix-up were so miniscule that the possibility didn’t even register in my brain, nor Swift’s, who had no idea that two Tyler Lashbrooks even existed. The only reason he realized the error was because of a tidbit thrown into our first phone call.
“Well, in our conversation, you kept saying, Apollo,” Swift recalled. “And I said, 'No, no, Tyler Lashbrook played that—I don't think he ever played at Apollo. And then, I got to looking, I went back and looked at their roster, and sure enough, there was a Tyler Lashbrook on that roster. So, I called you back, and I said, ‘I've got to apologize to you. I'm sitting here talking about a boy that I don't even know.’”
The Lashbrook who is currently coaching the Maine Celtics transferred to Apollo High School for his senior year, while the other Tyler stayed at Daviess County High School.
Unbeknownst to even an assistant basketball coach in the very town both Lashbrooks lived in, the ridiculousness of this coincidence stretches far beyond the mere fact that they go by the same name.
“What's also weird about that is neither one of our first names are Tyler Lashbrook,” non-Celtics Tyler told Hardwood Houdini. “That's our middle name that we both go by. I think he's William Tyler Lashbrook, and I'm Jeffrey Tyler Lashbrook.”
“Mine is William,” confirmed the Maine head coach. “Which is crazy because my mom was gonna name me Jeffrey if she didn't name me William. Isn't that crazy? How's that possible?”
And the Maine head coach isn’t even the first William Tyler Lashbrook. “I’m the third,” he said.
Celtics Tyler began his high school career at Daviess County, playing on the same JV team as his fellow Lashbrook. “We played JV together my freshman year, his sophomore year,” said non-Celtics Tyler.
And the absurdity of the situation is not lost on the two Tylers.
“It's not a popular name,” the Maine head coach said with a smile. “I don't understand.”
JV Ball was the last time the Lashbrook lineup was unleashed on the basketball community in Owensboro, but it was far from the first.
In fact, the two Tylers were childhood friends. They played the same sports, and that team-up led to an off-the-court (and field) friendship.
“When we were real young, like elementary school, we played on same soccer team and hung out,” said non-Celtics Tyler. “Like we were good friends. We'd stay at each other's house and stuff. And then as middle school, high school, we kind of moved on, got less and less close. But when we were young, we were really good friends.”
Both Lashbrooks found themselves in the youth basketball scene together, too. “I don't remember what teams they were, but they were competitive, young, youth teams,” said Celtics Tyler. “And I think he went to the same middle school as me as well. I was a grade up.”
They teamed up on travel teams but squared off against one another in the local leagues. For the most part, their friends and teammates had come to the understanding that the two Tylers were different people, with some exceptions. “People would always ask me if his sister was my sister,” said Celtics Tyler.
But while those in their circles had the name situation down pat, the Owensboro schools system just couldn’t figure it out.
“The funny story with that is, in middle school, your Boston Tyler Lashbrook used to be a little bit of a troublemaker, and [when] they would call Tyler Lashbrook to the office, they would come get me,” said non-Celtics Tyler. “And I'd walk in there, and they'd be like, 'Oh, wrong Tyler Lashbrook.' We'd always get mixed up.”
“That makes sense,” Celtics Tyler said with a smirk. “That makes the most sense of anything you've told me so far. I got sent there all the time. I don't know if anyone would ever know that now, but yeah.”
Though the Maine head coach has grown out of his troublemaker tendencies. (Or at least, he’d like to think so.)
“Just the little chaotic person, that was probably me,” he said of why he got called down to the principal’s office so often. “I think I've grown out of it, but maybe not. I was never in real trouble. It was just like b******* trouble. Talking or being the class clown or whatever.”
The non-Celtics Tyler Lashbrook had a storied high school basketball career
Once high school came around, their basketball careers hit their respective strides. “Both are great guys and good basketball players,” said Neil Hayden, who coached both Tylers in high school.
But as Maine’s current head coach took on the responsibilities of a high-level role player, the Tyler Lashbrook who is now a relative unknown in the basketball world began an illustrious varsity career.
By his senior year, non-Celtics Tyler was etching Daviess County High School’s (DCHS) name in the region’s history books. “His senior year, if I remember right, he helped lead them to the Sweet 16, which is our state tournament,” Hayden remembered. “Matter of fact, we just won our tournament, and it's only the second time since Tyler ‘that we’ve gone] back and played in the state tournament. So, Tyler was a big part of that team.”
“I think I averaged around 12, 13 points a game junior year and senior year, and shot like 44% or something from three,” non-Celtics Tyler said. “So, I was pretty decent at the long range. Made all-state senior year.”
And that 44% from distance isn’t an exaggeration.
“[He] shot a ton of threes, even before the Stephen Curry era of threes,” Hayden said. “They kind of played a style where they shot a bunch. So, yeah, Tyler was a really good player.”
“He was really good,” said Celtics Tyler. “He was a really good player.”
Even as his impressive high school career was coming to a close, Lashbrook made sure to leave a lasting impact. It’s no coincidence that DCHS has only been back to the state tournament a couple of times in the past 15 years.
In their regional tournament, DCHS found themselves up against the ropes against a team that outmatched them on paper in every way imaginable.
With about four minutes left in the game, DCHS found themselves down roughly five points. That’s when Lashbrook stepped into the spotlight.
“We get a steal half-court, and Tyler Lashbrook's dribbling the ball down, and he's on the break,” Swift remembered. “Now, Tyler wasn't the quickest kid in the world, but he wasn't slow, either. He pulls up behind the line [and] knocks down a three, which he was a knockdown shooter. And it got the crowd [pumped up], which we were in a real loaded place with fans.
“That momentum carried us to beat a team that had three Division I basketball players, and we did not have one Division I basketball player. They had a 6-foot-9 guy. They had a kid that went to Austin Peay on that team and another kid that went to college [to play]. We overachieved that year to go to the state tournament, but Tyler Lashbrook, that one particular play, kind of got us over the top.”
A state tournament run capped off an amazing high school basketball career for one Lashbrook, and neither of the Tylers was ready to stop dribbling once graduation came around.
But their obsessions manifested in much different ways.
Love for basketball took the Tyler Lashbrooks down different paths
For one, it was the common route: Intramurals and fandom. “In college, I did intramurals and all that kind of stuff, just trying to stick with it, but I'm still a super fan,” said the non-Celtics Tyler.
Ironically, he couldn’t possibly love the sport any differently from the Lashbrook who currently coaches the Celtics in Maine. Rather than cheering on the green and white, Jeffrey Tyler chose the purple and gold.
“I'm actually a huge Laker fan, which is funny,” he said.
“I don't know how anybody my age is not a Lakers fan because our age is [the] Kobe Bryant and Shaq [era],” he explained.
That was the end of the basketball road for one Tyler. Rather than pushing the limits of his on-court talents, he chose to study engineering in college. “I went to the University of Louisville and got a Master's in structural engineering, and now, I actually just started my own engineering company called Lashbrook Engineering,” he said.
He roots for the Lakers and the Cardinals now. The love for hoops is still there, but it no longer expresses itself on the hardwood.
But for the other Tyler, the Tyler currently coaching in Maine, the end of high school marked the beginning of an unbelievable road to the coach’s chair in which he resides today.
Maine Celtics head coach Tyler Lashbrook did everything possible to stay around basketball
Like his Lashbrook counterpart, Celtics Tyler went to college right after high school, but his hunger to stay around the game of basketball wouldn’t go away. “I was basically doing anything I could to be around the game,” he said.
The current Maine head coach wrote for SB Nation and FanSided, covering a bunch of different teams from the Kentucky Wildcats to the Denver Nuggets (for which he interviewed Kenneth Faried) to the Orlando Magic, his first favorite team, as he loved Stan Van Gundy.
He even got some help from a basketball media legend.
“Jonathan Tjarks. That was my editor when I was in college,” Lashbrook recalled. “Yeah, he was amazing to me. He was so kind.”
When he wasn’t writing, Lashbrook was coaching at Kentucky Waslyean’s basketball camps, and when he was, he made sure to use any credentials he got to their fullest extent. “I would like to write scouting reports to GMs and stuff,” he said.
Some even answered his cold-call emails.
“Daryl Morey, I think, responded,” Lashbrook said. “He would never remember. And I ended up being with him in Philly. I don't think he ever remembered me. I remember getting an email from like dmorey@rocketball and was like, 'Holy s***.'”
As Lashbrook continued college, he scraped together more and more random opportunities, all with the goal of staying around basketball, yet all while trying to find ways to pay for school.
He was on the girl’s scout team for a year at Western Kentucky. He kept blogging. He ran coaching clinics. He trained kids who wanted extra individual help. He even traveled home from college (about a one-hour drive) as much as possible to coach kids in his hometown of Owensboro. Lashbrook was doing anything and everything to make ends meet while eating, breathing, and sleeping basketball. “I was doing anything,” he said.
That’s when the Philadelphia 76ers came calling.
Philadelphia offered him an opportunity as an unpaid intern. It was a foot in the door. The exact chance that Lashbrook had been looking for. But there was a snag.
“The way it worked in Philly at the time was you needed to be an unpaid intern who got college credit, and I had just graduated,” he said.
Just as he always did, Lashbrook made it work.
“I was like, 'I'll figure this out,'” he said. “So, I ended up calling my school and being like, 'Hey, I have this opportunity to work for the Sixers as an unpaid intern, but I need a class that I could take, and I'll just pay for the class. I'll do whatever I can.’ And I landed that, which was stupid at the time because it was a risk.”
Luckily, once Lashbrook got settled in Philadelphia, he was able to start earning some part-time money for his role. “I think Pennsylvania like changed the laws,” he said.
Yet still, he continued to spread himself thin. If not for the money, then for the sheer desire to be around basketball for as many hours a day as possible.
And as he continued to wade his way through the hoops world, his goal became more and more clear—he wanted to coach.
“Once I was there [in Philly], someone needed to coach Brett Brown’s sons' team,” Lashbrook said. “He plays at Penn now. They were like 10. And I was like, 'Yeah, I'll do that. Easily. Easily, I'll do that. I want to coach.’”
“I coached that for like three years as I was becoming to be a video guy. So, then I ended up being like the video intern the next year. Assistant video, head video, and was coaching the kids on the side.”
As all that was happening, Lashbrook was gladly taking on all the effective grunt work within the 76ers coaching room. He worked with the Exhibit 10 guys and anyone else who found themselves on the outskirts of the Sixers organization as a player. “I was like, 'I'll work the,’” he said. “‘I'll do whatever I can to coach.'”
That unrelenting desire to coach and be around the game eventually paid off. When Lloyd Pierce, who spent four seasons as an assistant in Philadlephia from 2014 to 2018, accepted the Atlanta Hawks head coaching job, he wanted to take Lashbrook with him.
But Lashbrook had made himself too valuable to the Sixers organization.
“Brett was basically like, 'I'll just make you player development coach here,’” Lashbrook recalled. “And then that's how I became a player development coach. And then I've been coaching ever since.”
His first year as an official player development coach in Philly was the 2018-19 season, and since then, he’s been a consistent face on NBA coaching staffs.
Lashbrook worked and made connections for the next few years, including forming a close relationship with current Celtics assistant DJ MacLeay, who joined the Sixers in May of 2017.
“DJ MacLeay was my intern,” Lashbrook said. “Yeah, he was my intern for a long time.”
Eventually, MacLeay left Philadelphia for Boston in 2021, following Ime Udoka, whom he crossed paths with on the 76ers during the 2019-20 season.
This led to some interesting Celtics-Sixers playoff matchups for the two friends.
“Anytime we were about to play them, I'd never talk to him,” Lashbrook said. “Because he was helping with the defense in Boston, and I was helping with the offense in Philly. So it was like, everything that I was trying to do, I could see his counters. Not him, it was the group, or whatever.
“So it was like, 'So f*** DJ. I'm not gonna talk to DJ. Not during this series. Hell no.' And then, afterwards, we ended up, after we had lost or whatever, we'd end up shooting the s***.”
It was those catch-up sessions after the playoffs that led to Lashbrook’s jump to Boston for the 2023-24 season. “And then Sam [Cassell] obviously had my back,” he said. “I remember it was, like, I had to interview for Boston. Joe had brought in a couple of people. Met Joe. Obviously, at that point, he had Sam, he had DJ. Did some stuff during that interview that was basic interview stuff. Got the job.”
Lashbrook was a player development coach in Boston during their 2023-24 championship campaign. He worked closely with Oshae Brissett and Jaden Springer, the latter of whom he coached in Philly. Alongside Cassell, Lashbroko was reportedly involved in Boston’s comfortability trading for Springer in the first place.
The Celtics knew Tyler Lashbrook was perfect for Maine
Yet, while the years of coaching and climbing of the ranks saw Lashbrook enjoy immense growth, his eyes were still set on being a head coach. That’s why when the job in Maine opened up, the Celtics organization knew they had a great candidate already in-house.
“I thought I was going to be the G League coach in Philly,” Lashbrook said. “That was what I wanted to do a few years ago. A few years back. I wanted to be the G League coach there. And I was very open that I wanted to be head coach. This is what I want to do. So, everyone [knew].
“And it [the Maine position] opened up. I didn't even, it was like, they came to me. I'm sure there was like a process behind it. I'm not privy to all that, but [yeah].”
Lashbrook’s time in Maine got off to a rocky start in the Showcase Cup, as they went just 8–8. The regular season didn’t kick off much better, as by mid-January, Maine was still on the outside looking in of the playoff race.
That’s when Lashbrook called for a team meeting to discuss gratitude. To change the team’s outlook to their place in the basketball world. What they wanted to do. How they wanted to win. Now, Maine is back on the road to a G League Championship with one playoff victory already in hand.
“Tyler's always been a great coach,” Joe Mazzulla said on April 2 before the Celtics’ loss to the Miami Heat. “He was great with us last year offensively, and I think he went in right away with an identity of how he wanted to do things, and it's a credit to how he's done it.”
Recognition, confusion, and the Christmas lights of the Tyler Lashbrooks
Basketball has always been everything for Tyler Lashbrook. For both Tyler Lashbrooks. Their respective loves for the game may not look the same in practice, but they’re both rooted in the same core passion.
The same confusion that wreaked havoc on the Owensboro school system reached a much grander stage thanks to Celtics Tyler’s presence in the basketball world.
But in the very town where their doppelganger origin stories began, the other Tyler has the bigger claim to fame.
“Tyler Lashbrook, the non-Boston one, he's kind of a well-known family because his family has outrageous Christmas lights,” Hayden said. “They are the house that people drive to and have been on TV. You ever seen those Christmas lights shows that come on? So, they've been on that kind of stuff. So, the Lashbrook family is actually a kind of a well-known family around this community because of their Christmas lights.”
“We do a massive Christmas light display,” said non-Celtics Tyler. “So yeah, I mean, when people say Lashbrook in Owensboro, they usually associate that with the Christmas light people. The crazy Christmas light people.”
“Yeah, hell yeah,” Celtics Tyler said when asked about the Christmas lights. “F****** wild that you know about his Christmas lights. Because his Christmas lights are still like a big deal, I would imagine.”
For years, the tale of the two Tyler Lashbrooks from Owensboro, Kentucky, flew under the radar. The wild coincidences and almost spooky similarities between the two basketball fanatics went undiscovered.
Yet, all it took was one act of confusion to unravel a hilarious web of middle names, unwarranted trips to the principal’s office, and childhood friendship.
“It’s crazy,” said Celtics Tyler.
Basketball can bring anyone together. Even two Tyler Lashbrooks.
“It's super cool that a guy from Owensboro's now the coach [with the] Celtics,” said non-Celtics Tyler.