^ piggybacking off Weezy’s point, I see a difference between defending Luke and acknowledging that the blame is shared amongst the entire organization. Like I’ve said before, I’m not high on Luke, but I haven’t seen a strong argument for any realistic replacement. Hire a new PBO (and hopefully GM) and let them decide what to do with Luke.
I didn't mean everyone, just the ones that think Luke deserves to keep his job because he got dealt a bad hand. He is partly to blame for this mess, and IMO is most culpable out of anyone. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's good at interviews and he says all the right stuff, but his execution and in-game adjustments are laughable, as his idea of how to assemble a roster, or who to start, or who to play on the floor together. The Lakers are the least fundamental team in the league. They don't box out, they turn the ball over carelessly, and they play street ball on offense. And the fact that Luke was unwilling to beef up his coaching staff, against Magic's wishes, means he's got to go. Magic should have fired him first and then quit. He could have done the Lakers a favor on his way out.
Well that conveniently leaves out the 76ers, anyway, my point was people don’t always turn garbage teams around instantly when they are bad.
I just meant to point out to you, being a new member, that most people here are on your side, trust me. I want Luke gone, he’s a meh coach, the Lakers need a great, or at least good coach.
This is all a blessing in disguise. I just hope Pelinka is fired as well. Best case is sign Jerry West as a consultant, promote Ryan West to president, and sign David Griffin as GM. Offer more money to the sun's training staff. Magic can still be ambassador of the game and play with Twitter.... Embarrassing.... I think Jeannie needs to stop with the family Dynamics and do the right things . Also Luke needs to go coach college bball.
That doesn’t help your position as posted. You suggested something about Phoenix. They’ve only once previously won in the teens. And they then improved. Keep it light, man. Not everything is a conspiracy theory. I simply went back to when the Lakers sucked most.
The ONLY scenarios I would be okay with keeping Walton are if 1) He becomes a big selling point for Davis or a max FA 2) We have a roster with three 38%+ 3 point shooters who can play very good perimeter defense and a defensive anchor. Basically, we become the Houston Rockets lite. Cause based on how we played this season, that's pretty much the only offense Walton is interested in pursuing. Something like... PG: Irving/Walker (honestly should be someone larger) SG: Klay Thompson/Danny Green SF: James PF: Ariza C: Davis Something like that would work. Run high PnR out top with James & Davis every time (Walton's favorite play). If you hedge, Davis dives for a lob. If you help, someone's open for 3. If you switch, James or Davis ISO on a mismatch. On defense, you switch everything. Done.
I can't read through all of this and maybe someone else is thinking the same as me but as soon as I heard about Magic, I got it. Now he can recruit freely for us. Such is his loyalty to the lakers he doesn't need pay or title and he can still advise when Jennie wants to talk or even Rob. I'm not worried about this at all. He can go back to tweeting good things about players and telling them to come to the Lakers. It's really all he ever did effectively anyways.
This is my position as well. Due to Magic’s recent seemingly impulsive decisions regarding trades, I just didn’t feel like he’d built up enough equity to whack Luke. To be honest, it felt like every decision Magic made was digging us further in the hole. I love Magic the basketball player. He was the reason I became a Laker fan. But I’d had enough of president of basketball ops Magic.
Agree with everything. The thing with the Phoenix' staff I think has more to do with AZ's climate than all of their staff completely.
The main point I was making is regardless of win total, bad teams don’t always suddenly improve. But from here on out we can agree to disagree and I’ll leave it as I don’t want to derail the thread on something stupid.
Honestly, more like 3 Trevor Ariza's. It would essentially turn us into a version of last years Rockets. I'm not sure where this idea that if Luke had a good team we would have suddenly performed leaps and bounds better on the offensive end came from. Maybe it's all the hit pieces on Magic and our roster construction recently. But to be honest, Luke has shown no indication during his Laker's tenure that he is capable of that. A good coach adapts his system to the roster given. While I agree we weren't given a roster with outstanding spacing, and were hit with injuries, Luke did little to nothing to optimize the situation. In fact, the adjustments he made to our offense this season (1-4 high) made everything WORSE. If you gave Luke most of the top teams in the NBA this year, they would perform worse. Only a few of them that repeatedly run the high PnR with 3 other dudes standing around would have succeeded. And btw, no team ever doing that has made it to the NBA finals. This idea of shooting too, is overblown. In Golden State, Luke had lineups with multiple guys like Livingston, Barbosa, West, Speights, Iggy, and Ezeli out there. All below average shooters. And those benches were lauded for their depth still managed to run up the score against most teams in the league. In fact Kerr praised the Warriors ability in having *playmakers* as the reason they could have their stars play off ball in the offense. In fact, if Luke really cared, he could have pulled multiple plays out of the Cavs playbook from last year that didn't depend on any sort of shooting, but did depend on LeBron's elite vision. Their high post split ripped from the Princeton offense, or their single side tag, all of which were leaps and bounds better than a single possession I've seen this team run all season. Said another way: If you don't have three elite shooters, don't run an offense that requires 3 elite shooters. I can quote you stats from Cranjis on our talent utilization, show you videos from LFR, or hell, even I've written a long piece here breaking down something like 8 of our halfcourt possessions in a row pointing this out. Until someone shows me a shred of proof of Luke's ability to coach an offense, there's no use in discussing what would happen if we had a very talented team. Our offense would stink, and we'd probably resort to running multiple isolations, be beaten down by the top teams in the league, while a 35 year old James would probably get injured again carrying the load in the process.
Beyond Walton, though, whoever is in this organization needs top down support. That is going to be critical towards getting everyone on the same page so we can work towards winning again. While I agree Luke doesn't have to shoulder all the blame, I think we can do better than Luke. Plus, he and his staff have pretty much mentally checked out already. If we're cleaning part of the house, it's time for a fresh start. I'd say Luke right now has shown me he's an average coach at his best. And rather than deal with the drama, it may be better to bring in a new face who our new president of basketball operations hand picks, so he has support from the top down. Either way, Luke isn't the biggest issue we have right now. It should be getting on the same page in the FO, and start improving this roster over the summer. Having top down support is crucial. Luke never really had it from Magic or Pelinka. And now Pelinka and Luke definitely won't have it from whoever is coming next, unless Kobe is walking through that door to become president, LOL.
somebody should make a gif using those scenes where a guy is walking away from an explosion in slow motion, magic can be the guy n the explosion can be staples or lakers practice facility
