The funniest chapter yet in the Los Angeles Lakers coaching saga
Dan Hurley turns down a boatload of money to leave UConn, and now the Lakers must go to Plan B. Which might be Plan A. Or a new Plan C. Hard to say, really
How many people would turn down a $70-million offer to move to Los Angeles for a new job?
One, at least: Dan Hurley.
The head coach of the Connecticut men’s basketball team was just last week said to be the main focus of the Los Angeles Lakers, which was itself a surprise because earlier reports suggested TV analyst JJ Reddick was close to landing the job.
But Hurley, with a weekend to mull it over, has decided to stay in college. The official word is that he wants to continue with the program he has built, as UConn tries to win a third straight national championship. That is, of course, what you would say. It sounds a lot better than, “Sorry, the Lakers kind of feel like a gong show right now.”
Which is basically where we are at. Let us recap a brief recent history of one of the signature NBA franchises: LeBron James signed there as a free agent in 2018, evidently deciding at the time that he wanted to finish his career in Los Angeles, which would also be a good base for his school-age kids and a good spot for his busy non-basketball career, which includes a bunch of things in the sports and entertainment spheres. Fair enough. The Lakers, upon his arrival, sucked, but that was fine because LBJ’s presence basically put out a lawn sign that said SUPERSTARS COME HERE so he could begin assembling his third superteam, after those in Miami and Cleveland (the second time).
And it worked! (Mostly.) Anthony Davis forced his way to the Lakers, who gave up half their roster to the New Orleans Pelicans in the deal, but the combination of James and Davis was good enough to win an NBA title in 2020. Would they have won it had the season and playoffs not been completed in the weird Orlando COVID bubble? It’s impossible to know, but they did go 52-19 over the course of that interrupted season and were the top seed in the West. It wasn’t a complete fluke.
Since then, though? It’s been rough. The Lakers sagged to seventh in the West the following season, as both James and Davis missed extended time due to injuries, and lost in the first round of the playoffs. That summer they traded several pieces to add Russell Westbrook, a superstar in his own right but also one who was no longer his All-NBA self. The trade was widely seen as LeBron pushing to add another star with whom he was familiar even if it didn’t make any sense from a basketball perspective. Unless, that is, Westbrook was coming to the Lakers to play a supporting role, deferring to LeBron as the ball handler and becoming someone who would focus on defence and, crucially, never shoot. He did not do that. Westbrook took almost as many shots as Davis, but missed a lot more, and the Lakers sagged even further, to 11th in the West. And then they fired head coach Frank Vogel, two years after he led them to that NBA title.
New coach Darvin Ham was said to have got Westbrook on board with the program, and even brought him off the bench for a while, but they ended up unloading him last season to the crosstown Los Angeles Clippers. The Lakers still weren’t great, finishing seventh in the West, but then pulled off a couple of playoff upsets to make the West final, where they were absolutely battered by the Denver Nuggets, the eventual champions.
By this point, the start of the current season, they didn’t really have any moves left to make. So many assets had been traded away in the Davis and Westbrook deals that they had to hope that a full Westbrook-less season would be enough to get the Lakers back near the top of the West, even if LeBron was now entering his 20th — !! — campaign in the league.
Nope. The Lakers were decent, in part because they had healthy years from James and Davis, but there were reports mid-season that the players weren’t impressed with coach Ham. They could only finish sixth in the conference and were pasted, again, by the Nuggets, this time in the first round of the playoffs.
Ham was fired, and for weeks now there have been reports that Reddick, the former NBA player who among his media jobs co-hosts a podcast with LeBron James, was a leading candidate to replace him. This is funny, unless you are a fan of the Lakers, in which case it is sad. Reddick has worked in media since retiring, and has no coaching experience at all. The Lakers’ competitive window has probably closed, but to the extent that they might have a chance at improvement, LeBron is going to turn 40 next season and Davis, injury prone as he is, will turn 32. Time is a-wastin’. Would it make any sense at all to turn that over to a rookie coach? Not unless the idea is to essentially install a Friend of LeBron and let the team kinda-sorta coach itself.
Which actually might not be a crazy idea: let the next coach oversee LeBron’s sunset years and then move him out when he retires. That would even mesh with the wild possibility that the Lakers will supplement their weak roster by adding LeBron’s son, Bronny James, in the upcoming draft. He’s a middling NBA prospect at this point, but if the next couple seasons are just about making LeBron happy so he retires a Laker, might as well take a flyer on LeBron’s kid and have him coached by LeBron’s friend.
But, wait. Wait. Offering the head-coach job to Dan Hurley is the exact opposite of that. He’s highly experienced and highly successful, and you wouldn’t give the guy a long-term, lucrative contract to come to Los Angeles and be LeBron’s caddy. Coaches with the resume of Hurley only come in if they are given a degree of autonomy to shape the program as they see fit. And so, the two guys most publicly linked with the Lakers’ job are a completely inexperienced coach and a coach who just won back-to-back NCAA titles. I’m going to suggest here that the Lakers’ front office does not have what you would call a “plan.”
It’s fun to watch, at least. Where do the Lakers go from here? Back to Reddick? Pivot to a traditional hire like a current NBA assistant? (Bo-ring.) Magic Johnson? Phil Jackson? A generative AI model that has read the books of Phil Jackson? I’m ready for anything.