The Los Angeles Lakers have still not hired a head coach and is potentially waiting to see if Doc Rivers becomes available with the Donald Sterling situation dragging out.
Rivers would not be expected to remain head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers if the sale of the franchise to Steve Ballmer is overturned.
The Lakers haven't interviewed any candidates since free agency began with the exception of Byron Scott. The Lakers also have not currently scheduled any future interviews and Scott is considered the favorite.
yeah, pathetic
I wont lie this looks bad. I like Doc more than most on here but to hold off on a coach much longer is crazy... Besides Doc has only proven to be effective with stacked rosters. Lakers do NOT have a stacked roster.
Not happening for many reasons, starting with the fact that one way or another, DTS will be out, followed by the fact that Doc is currently under contract, and of course, even if it was a possibility, there's zero chance of Fredo giving up power and Mitch taking a demotion
Lakerfan continues to cement themselves as the most delusional fanbase in sports.... have fun with Byron Scott
I'm sure it's just a rumor. I don't think Doc will join the Lakers given the chance, in case some people don't remember, the reason Doc left Boston was because he doesn't want to be part of a rebuild. The Lakers are in a similar situation so I dont think it's appealing right now to a coach like Doc.
Lakers
I agree. It's just talk to try and explain why Lakers dragging their feet.
It's going to be another lost season for the Lakers. With Kobe in the lineup, I think they will hover around 500 and finish with a 42-40 record (best case scenario) which still isn't good for a playoff spot. Worse, Phoenix owns their pick IIRC.
Do you mean with Bledsoe?..
They can hang around .500 and compete for 9th/10th with Bledsoe, but if you're referring to their current lineup, I'd be absolutely shocked if they aren't the worst or 2nd worst team in the West, tbh..
Their roster is terrible, they don't have a coach, and they don't even have a top 40 player in the league, tbh..
If the Lakers are waiting for Doc just what does anyone think that Sterling will just let him walk over to the Lakers.
He has a contract with the Clippers and Sterling could hold him to it. Even if the NBA voids all the team contracts, I can
see Sterling taking the NBA and all it's owners to court. It will Happen!
They can reach the 40 win mark, not like it matters anyway since it doesn't get them anywhere. But that's a best case scenario with Kobe giving them 25, 4 and 5 while Boozer and Lin playing above expectations which is reasonable since they're playing for a contract. If they have the right coach, they can be a decent team. Their bigs are all projected to also play their ass out, and with 1yr deals being a constant reminder they need to show up consistently I can see it.
But like I said, the difference in winning 40 or 35 is pointless for them.
But Phil, he's always brought teams out of mediocrity with little to no superstar talent.
Don't have Insider, but I'm sure this article sums up the Lakers incompetence. To not have a coach at this point is inexcusable.
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story...-franchise-nba
Last edited by midnightpulp; 07-25-2014 at 12:00 AM.
I expect Kobe to miss the majority of this season as well unless the Lakers compete as ol' sport won't put his "talents" to use on a sub 500 team
..Kobe giving them 25, 4 and 5..
Kobe singlehandedly killed that once proud franchise.
I dont think 25 4 and 5 is all that unreasonable if healthy it may be a low efficiency 25 ...but I would not be shocked. My guess is 21 4 4 is more realistic...Kobe giving them 25, 4 and 5..
My guess is he'll play 6 games
Especially when they are going to play pick up ball without coach.
But we have a coach, midget. And the season is two months away. Let the 16xchamps do what they do best.
Lakers are a Hollywood tragedy
BY BRADFORD DOOLITTLE FOR ESPN.COM
The Los Angeles Lakers have been at the hub of the NBA universe pretty much forever, but their star went supernova a couple of years ago. For decades, the Lakers seemed to hover above any of the rules that governed typical basketball operations, but no more. And like Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” the Lakers continue to preen like stars, but outside of Los Angeles, fewer and fewer seem to care.
This is a franchise at its nadir. The Lakers missed the playoffs last season for just the sixth time in the franchise’s 67 years of existence. Their 27 wins were the fewest since arriving in Los Angeles in 1960 — three fewer than the season before the Lakers acquired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Los Angeles also missed the playoffs in Kareem’s first season on the West Coast — the only time the organization has ever missed the postseason two years in a row. It very well could happen again this season.
How did the NBA’s most glamorous franchise plummet to such depths?
Mediocre talent
Consider where the Lakers were at the end of last season: 27 wins, but with the point differential of a 25-win team. The Lakers added Julius Randle and Jordan Clarkson in the draft. Through free agency, they brought in Ed Davis. Jeremy Lin was acquired in a trade, and Carlos Boozer via amnesty waivers. Using three-year averages for wins above replacement (WARP) and Kevin Pelton’s rookie projections, that group figures to put up about 9.9 WARP in the coming season.
The players the Lakers lost include Pau Gasol, Jodie Meeks, Jordan Farmar, Chris Kaman,Kendall Marshall, Kent Bazemore and MarShon Brooks. That group projects to be worth 9.9 WARP. It’s very much been a summer of running in place for the Lakers.
The “home run” acquisition is Kobe Bryant, who played in six games at below replacement level a season ago. He’ll be 36 this season and is coming off two major injuries, both the type that can permanently derail the career of much younger athletes. Bryant has averaged 7.2 WARP over his past three seasons and, yes, it’s probably a good way to look at his value despite all of his missed games. The average of his past three healthy seasons was 11.5 WARP, and a four-win decline seems appropriate given his age, time off and the seriousness of his injuries. Bottom line: Even if Bryant boosts the Lakers by seven or eight wins this season, the team will remain far from the playoff chase.
Too much Kobe
In many ways, it also has been a string of bad luck for Los Angeles. When Mitch Kupchak traded for Dwight Howard a couple of years ago, it seemed as if he had laid the cornerstone of yet another Lakers dynasty. Instead, Howard struggled through an up-and-down season, and left for less money to play in Houston.
All along, Kupchak had carefully managed the Lakers’ cap situation to account for his rapidly aging roster. Entering last season, the Lakers had only Steve Nash‘s contract on the books entering this summer. That changed when Bryant was signed to a massive two-year extension for $48.5 million. The extension came a couple of weeks before Bryant made his return from a blown Achilles tendon, and about three weeks before his comeback was snuffed out after six games. If Bryant had not been reinjured, perhaps the team’s outlook would have been different entering the summer when, despite the extension, the Lakers still had room to add a max contract. But that’s not what happened.
The Lakers’ primary target this summer — like so many other teams — was Carmelo Anthony. Kupchak’s pitch to Anthony was reportedly centered on future cap space and the off-court opportunities that come with being a Laker. “Hey, we’re the Lakers!”
But does anybody really care?
In reality, the Lakers’ pitch to Anthony was probably doomed a year earlier, when Howard decided to join the Rockets. After Anthony’s rejection, Kupchak had two paths from which to choose: Pick up the pieces from the leftovers in the marketplace, or truly tear down. The latter option was not really an option at all, even though it’s a path other NBA teams often must choose by default. With Bryant heading into the final two seasons of his Hall of Fame career, you can’t simply punt those years. At the same time, the former option means that Bryant, almost assuredly, will fall short in his quest to match Michael Jordan‘s six championship rings.
So Kupchak added what he could, and he obtained some decent values. Lin’s cap number is fair value, though his actual cash payout of $14.9 million is about double what he’s worth. Davis is a tremendous value and Boozer, whose Chicago contract had reached the level of an atrocity, suddenly became a bargain when he was plucked from waivers. All told, including the rookies, the newcomers project to put up about $22.8 million worth of WARP, for which they’ll be paid $22.5 million this season. Where the Lakers have overpaid has been in the players they’ve retained, including Bryant. The returnees on the Lakers roster project to produce $25.9 million in WARP, for which they’ll be paid $51.6 million.
Lakers mystique gone
It’s easy to wonder just what in the world is going on in Los Angeles. And surely, it has been a lackluster summer. However, if you trace back through the past few years, you can clearly see Kupchak’s design. It hasn’t worked, but it doesn’t mean it was necessarily wrong. There have been missteps, sure, such as the doomed superteam formula and the current lack of a coach.
More than anything though, it has become apparent that Lakers mythology no longer trumps marketplace reality in the post-lockout NBA. Location, even Los Angeles, matters less than winning and money management (perhaps in that order). Fit with teammates matters as well, and at this point of his career, maybe no one wants to be a sideshow to the end of Bryant’s run. That doesn’t diminish Kobe’s career, but it makes for a bittersweet ending.
So while Kupchak makes Bryant’s denouement as cushy as possible, he’ll continue with the contingencies to his contingency plans. There will be space for a big name next summer. There will be tons of space for stars in the summers after that. Perhaps the space, along with the short-term deals Kupchak has been stockpiling, will yield a blockbuster trade. It’s not sexy, but it’s the way the rest of the NBA has had to live for some time.
All Kupchak really has to do is look to Lakers history. It has always been about the draft.Jerry West and Elgin Baylor were Lakers lifers. The Lakers didn’t win with Kareem until they drafted Magic Johnson. Shaquille O’Neal moved West because he was starry-eyed, but the les didn’t come until Kobe, another career Laker, matured. Stockpiling assets might not seem like the Laker way, but it’s the patient approach. It’s just not something we’ve seen from the purple and gold lately.
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