Ron Adams rebuffs Lakers, stays with Warriors

The Los Angeles Lakers took criticism over the last few years for an extremely uninspiring assistant coaching staff under Luke Walton. At one point, they apparently were frustrated enough with the group Walton put together that they tried to step in.

Frank Vogel has already had Jason Kidd hoisted onto him in one of the more questionable moves of the summer, but one hire that would have been widely lauded was Ron Adams, of the Golden State Warriors.

The Lakers tried to lure Adams, getting permission from the Warriors to speak to him a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, according to Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN, Adams will be staying in the bay:

Ron Adams has turned down an assistant-coaching job with the Los Angeles Lakers and will remain in a revised role on the Golden State Warriors coaching staff, league sources told ESPN.

So, the Lakers now continue their search for viable assistant coaches for Vogel, whose group of assistants still seems fairly thin. Lionel Hollins was a respected head coach and does offer value, though he’s more defensive-minded than anything else. Kidd is still, I guess, there — and that’s about the extent of his value to the team.

Like Hollins, Vogel is best known for his tactical abilities on the defensive side of the ball, leaving, well, no one who offers much value offensively. Even Adams is known as one of the best defensive minds in the league, so he wouldn’t have necessarily fixed that problem.

The thinking here might be to just stack the deck on defense and hand over the offense to LeBron James, but systems do come in handy and assistant coaches who have spent years studying what might be best for this team couldn’t hurt. Such an approach makes some sense, but there are holes in the thinking — like what the offense would look like when James is on the bench, for example.

There is still plenty of time to fill out the assistant coaching roster, and the Lakers’ thinking might have been to wait and see what the team looks like before a decision is made on the architect of the offense. Hopefully over the next few months, we’ll get some clarity on the direction they go in. As we get that information, suffice it we will relay it to you.

Adams would have been an incredible addition to the Lakers, but it makes sense that he would stick it out in Golden State where he has won three titles and still is comfortable with the infrastructure of that team. The Lakers still have quite a bit of work to do, so it’ll be interesting to see how they approach that task.

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