Ex-Coach Luke Walton Discussion

Shaq was possibly the most dominant player ever...yet he needed Penny to get to the Finals and Kobe and Wade to get a title.
Kobe is one of the best of all time...needed Shaq and Pau for them ringsssss, cause all Kwame, Smush and Dwight could do was get him some crutches.
Phil needed MJ, Pip, Kobe, Shaq...what other 50 greatest players am I missing?...to get him the title of most winningest coach ever.

In a team sport you need help, no matter how great you are individually. I'm not saying Luke is a great coach, and saying he's a bad coach is debatable.

But here are things you can't debate. He's a 2nd year head coach who has zero to minimal stability and carry over from his 1st season. Holdovers from last year are Nance, JC, Randle (all 3 are on the trade block and avg less than 25 mins per contest), Deng (does this need any explanation?), Brew & Ennis (who both joined the team half way through last season), Zu (possibly more trade bait) and BI (who is a couple months older than Zo, who just turned 20). So in addition to a roster overhaul and an abridged training camp, you have a team that is playing for the first time, but is led and heavily leaned on players that make up the 3rd youngest team in the league.

You can argue the validity of the strength of schedule, but this young a** team with their young a** coach just went through a brutal December schedule of games and most of us with a straight face can argue that some were winnable had we just made our free throws and limited turnovers. Some of us can even argue that we just needed one closer/go to player/star to win even more of those games. But its the recent routes we endured along with the crazy drop off in our defense (which is also remarkable seeing how we've been dead last for the last few seasons) that has wanted everybody to go after Luke in all types of ways, from his crazy rotations (which may or may not be mandated by the FO) to his supposed man crush of Nance (who avgs less minutes than both JC and Jules aka Luke's supposed whipping boys).

Not every coach in this league is Popovich, but I am seeing Brad Stevens name brought up quite a bit. Forget that the C Bags play in the Leastern conference...dude led his team to 25 games in his inaugural season, but did follow it up with a 40 win season. From that point on he's led the C bags to winning seasons, but dude inherited a team that had a champion PG in Rondo that had recently come off of 2 Finals visits. Meanwhile Luke inherited a PG that was Mr. Cameraphone only to be flipped to a PG that has major daddy BBBaggage.

The C Bags also dealt for IT at the trade deadline in Stevens 2nd season (2015), signed Al Hortford in 2016 and traded for Irving and signed Hayward in 2017. Other than those key moves, the core of the roster has stayed intact and Ainge had a cupboard of draft picks for Stevens waiting on his arrival.

Meanwhile Jimbo hired Luke and other than giving him BI and Zu, that draft cupboard was bare. They then followed it up with MozDeng and just like that, the capboard was bare.

Stevens was allowed to marinate...while Luke and the current FO just had their first summer together. Ironically, just like in Stevens 2nd year at the trade deadline, Luke is looking at his first key core move heading into this deadline in his 2nd season.

 

He should given we’ve literally been one of the worst defenses in the league the last few years

 

He’s our coach for the next 30 years, so y’all just need to get used to it

 

I'm kinda surprised so many people outside of Laker fans are coming to Luke's defense.

I feel flattered for Luke in way...odd.

 

don't care what other coaches or agents have to say, if this is another 20win season, you cant sit there with a straight face and say luke is a good coach....don't give me that garbabge about lack of talent, we have a former all star, a semi decent 2 way sg and a supposed transcending player in ball

 

At this point, talking is the only thing most people are good at. And frankly, I do not listen to much of it anymore. Whether in life or sports. Most people just talk to talk. There is no reason this team should be doing what last years team did, record wise. They are a better team, more talent and more experience. This team responded for the first time in the Atlanta game, that was the first time I had seen that. I want to see a winning streak now that can give them some stability. Until then, I couldn't care less to talking, hope or wishful thinking. Its all b******* without the execution.

 

Haha nice.....Hey Tania, you got Rich Paul's number right? You wanna find out what he thinks?

 

The rest of the season should ease up; we had a difficult December schedule, and when we could have taken advantage of games back in October and November, we didn't...

That said, let's see what he has the rest of the season. There is nobody in the Lakers organization that doesn't need accountability; they all need it. It's a long season left; next game up is Sac at him. We should win that game. Then we can take it from there...

 

The only stat that matters when evaluating Luke is 12-27. We definitely have the talent to win more and he's not getting the job done. Our record shows that we've made zero progress from last year. Fire his @$$

 

Winnable games are lost by bad coaches

 

i mean he is probably the most slampiece looking NBA coach at the moment...

 

not an easy position to be in.

he's got so many expiring contracts, and young up and coming players told they are on the block, and he has to teach them fundamentals they never learned, coach, manage egos and depression spells, and encourage their development all at the same time. And listen to their parents, fans, etc.

I bet he smokes pot.

 

These are some of the exact things we said about Scott during his short tenure here with the Lakers. There were some here that were defending him; but he got fired.

I didn't like Scott and shortly and a year into his position here, I started calling for his head, but some resisted because of the very same reasons we are defending Luke now; but I like Luke, and he's a lot more likeable than Scott.

But in the end, we're judged by wins/losses. So, if Luke doesn't get it together, and start putting some wins together, starting soon, he'll be shown the door, too.

 

this laker team isnt the only bottom dwellers that has consistently been in most of the gms even against elite teams....sac just beat clev n den, pho just best okc (the team that waxed our team by 36), nets beat clev n have veen in almost every gm