EL SEGUNDO — Darvin Ham has never been more afraid than he was when he was 14 years old.

He was driving for a pizza with his brother when gunshots sprayed across the street in his Saginaw, Michigan, neighborhood in a drug deal gone bad, as Ham once put it. Ham took a bullet that was never intended for him in the jaw, with it lodging in the back of his neck – missing death by a matter of degrees.

Many people might want to shelve that trauma, leaving it in the back of their mind. But what Ham took from that day – never taking a moment for granted – has become a central pillar of his life. When asked about facing the pressure of coaching the Lakers, Ham brought up the 1988 shooting. After surviving that, a new job isn’t going to give him the jitters.

“You go through something like that, it’s going to be one of two things: It’s going to make you fearful or fearless,” he said. “It made me fearless.”

The 48-year-old emphasized his commitment to toughness and accountability on Monday, his first official day as head coach of the Lakers. Ham started his NBA coaching career here in 2011 on the player development staff under Mike Brown. Since then, he’s grown a reputation as a no-nonsense assistant with a gift for building relationships – all traits he’ll need to try to bring the Lakers from the lottery team they were last season back into a championship contender they were two years ago.

While Ham’s X&Os base was cultivated on a championship-winning coaching staff in Milwaukee, Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka emphasized that Ham earned the unanimous support of the coaching committee because of his character traits. After finishing 33-49 and missing the postseason entirely after a hyped offseason, Pelinka believes the roster needs an infusion of Ham’s brand of grit.

“I think one of the things we lacked last year was an identity of toughness,” Pelinka said. “We are excited to see (how) a coach with his leadership style will bring those attributes to our team next year.”

One of Monday’s talking points that will drive league chatter for the coming weeks: The Lakers seemed very sure Russell Westbrook is coming back.

Westbrook himself stood to the side of the gym during the press conference, just two months removed from blowing the lid off of the strained relationship with previous head coach Frank Vogel. While rumors have flown that the Lakers wish to move on from the polarizing Westbrook – who can sign a $47.1 million contract option later this month – Ham could not have painted a more different evaluation of what the 33-year-old former MVP could bring to the team next year.

“Don’t get it messed up: Russell is one of the best players our league has ever seen, and there is still a ton left in that tank,” he said. “I don’t know why people continue to try to write him off. I’m gonna approach him like I have every player I’ve ever encountered.”

If the Lakers continue with their superstar alignment of Westbrook, LeBron James and Anthony Davis next season, Ham promised better offensive spacing with a four-out, one-in alignment (implying Davis’ move to full-time center). Ham also has a strong defensive background, plying his knowledge as a member of Detroit’s 2004 championship team and growing it throughout bench stints in Atlanta and Milwaukee under Mike Budenholzer.

The most sentimental moments of Ham’s press conference came when he talked about Budenholzer, who he said set him up to succeed by entrusting him with duties on both sides of the ball, as well as scouting and filling in as head coach when Budenholzer was out with COVID-19 last season. As he talked about the coach with whom he spent nine years, Ham’s deep baritone cracked.

“The emotion comes from when you’ve been with a special person in this business for the last nine years in Coach Bud,” said Ham, the 28th coach in Lakers history. “I thanked him. I said, ‘Well, at least you dropped me off where you picked me up at.’ Because he picked me up from here in L.A. So the fact that I’m coming back to L.A., he was thrilled, super thrilled.”

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Coming back to L.A. stirred memories for Ham, too, including working with Kobe Bryant as a young assistant. He spoke glowingly of the film work, court drills and dinners they shared. But what might have made him grow the most was when they sparred.

“If I could go back and forth with him and have him disagree with me and double back and tell me I was right – we all know how stubborn he was, man,” Ham chuckled. “It just gave me a wealth of confidence in myself as a coach.”

Ham brings gravitas as a former player, but one who had to fight his way into the NBA. A late-comer to basketball, he became known as a backboard-shattering, dunking wunderkind at Texas Tech. He had to grind through international play before finding his footing as a role-playing swingman in Milwaukee, Atlanta and Detroit: “I think it prepares you and it creates a certain type of mentality to where you don’t want to cut any corners.”

There are no apparent shortcuts for the Lakers, who face a daunting offseason with next-to-no salary cap space, few draft assets and the uncertainty of Westbrook’s future with the franchise after a rocky debut season. Ham still has to assemble a coaching staff: He shot down a report that Rasheed Wallace, a former teammate of his, had clinched a spot on his bench but acknowledged he is under consideration.