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The Los Angeles Lakers have apparently fully moved on from their failed negotiations with Tyronn Lue and are now trying to make him jealous with other candidates they’re going to talk to focusing on his and Luke Walton’s replacements.
What a mess.
The Los Angeles Lakers are adding these former NBA coaches to their coaching search: Lionel Hollins, Frank Vogel and Mike Woodson, league sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 8, 2019
For those (myself included) who were happy to not see Jason Kidd among those names Charania listed, well, it’s five o’clock somewhere.
Juwan Howard and Jason Kidd are still in the pool of candidates for the Lakers' coaching job. Can also confirm they are adding Lionel Hollins, Frank Vogel and Mike Woodson to their list of candidates, as first reported by @ShamsCharania
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) May 8, 2019
If you’re sitting there at home or wherever you are and wondering why this is such a shitshow, well, Adrian Wojnarowski has you covered.
Lakers advisor Kurt Rambis is playing a major role in the franchise's coaching search, league sources tell ESPN. He's emerging as a powerful voice in basketball operations.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 8, 2019
Rambis’ serious involvement was also reported previously this week, so it’s clear that part is legit, as much as no one but the Lakers seems to want it to be.
This is all the kind of thing that happens when an organization hires an incompetent executive in the first place (Magic Johnson), lucks out when they do them the solid of resigning before things get too bad, but then promote parts of said incompetent front office (Rob Pelinka, Rambis) rather than hiring anyone logical to replace the initial incompetence.
In essence, the Lakers have doubled and tripled down on incompetence, so of course this isn’t going to end well.
Nick Wright isn’t usually in the business of breaking news, but this whole situation is so damn stupid that we can believe just about any extent of the ineptitude surrounding the organization at this point.
Source: The Buss family & Rob Pelinka signed off on hiring Ty Lue last week. Kurt & Linda Rambis were the only parties opposed, and convinced the Lakers to hold off, which lead to today.
— nick wright (@getnickwright) May 8, 2019
So according to this, the final snag in the Lakers’ search for the head coach was two people who have no legitimate grounds to make that call, and are merely around because Lakers owner Jeanie Buss considers Linda her bestie. This is the team we’re rooting for. This is our collective nightmare.
Lue’s hiring could have marked a poor process somehow resulting in positive results. That sometimes happens when you have the resources to make up for ineptitude and use them wisely. Whoever the Lakers do hire will be the outright results of poor process, and that almost always ends in failure.
The Lakers are the laughingstock of the NBA right now. Until they seriously rethink their priorities, that isn’t changing anytime soon. What could change is James’ trust in the organization. Should that run out, the Lakers will have completely hit rock bottom, and the Buss family will have only themselves to blame.
This is obviously a developing story, so we will have more updates as they come along. For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts.