Lakers part ways with scout Chaz Osborne

Chaz Osborne, the infamous bartender-turned-scout for the Los Angeles Lakers, is no longer with the team, per Mark Medina of Inside Socal.

Osborne was incredibly close with Jim Buss after meeting him at the horse races. As Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka have done their absolute best to tighten up various department, bolster others and rid the organization of inefficiencies, this move probably could have been seen coming.

The Lakers are beefing up their analytic department, expanding their scouting teams into a tier system, revamping their player development personnel and, well, nowhere in those plans was any room left for a mixologist, unfortunately.

Johnson and Pelinka have their work cut out for them as they fill new positions or hire replacements for those who have either been let go or resigned. They’ll have to do all that at some point between now and either at least the lottery or latest, the NBA draft.

Until that time comes, all we can do pour one out for Chaz.

We leave you with an amazing-at-the-time but now otherworldly hilarious quote from Jim Buss about the thinking process behind hiring Chaz (h/t: Roland Lazenby, HoopsHype):

"Evaluating basketball talent is not too difficult," he told Sports Illustrated many years ago. "If you grabbed 10 fans out of a bar and asked them to rate prospects, their opinions would be pretty much identical to those of the pro scouts."