Assistant Coach Discussion: McMillan And Brooks

Not gonna defend the FO after this s**t show, but I have to say, Woj really screwed the Lakers with his reporting.

I don't like any of the options left, should have just extended Vogel and given him a true defensive team to work with .

 

Whatever coach we end up hiring needs to at least these and more

Command respect
Hold players accountable when necessary
Stress defense and the fundamentals that goes with it
Stress rebounding
Have an offensive plan that's not just chuck up 3's
Work some inside out plays
Stress driving to the basket
Develop the young players

 

i meant after the situation: vogel won a ring; lue didn't. lue also blew a series lead in the playoffs with his team healthy.

my contention is lue is a meh coach, like most nba coaches. people that think he's better need to prove it with something more than "he wins more than expected with a very expensive roster" and "players and bloggers say good things about him". players and bloggers loved doc rivers for a decade-plus, too, and he's never been good.

my issue with the rob haters (like irwin) is that they assume those that hate rob within the organization are definitely the good/right guys. people who are successful rarely make everyone around them happy all the time. if every single person is happy with me, i'm probably doing something wrong. why? because some people out there are s***ty. if s***ty people approve of what i'm doing, i'm doing something wrong.

you know which nba gm is most certainly a snake? daryl morey. everyone's favorite gm. danny ainge? huge snake. best in the business! i'm sorry some lakers staffer doesn't like rob and is friends with irwin, but irwin needs to be better in the way he covers the situation. being wrong several times hasn't chastened him or made him question his sources at all, and that's weird, man.

that said, i agree that having that level of internal discord is problematic. if anything, if i'm rob, a lot of my quieter time would be spent finding and removing these people from my organization. it's one thing to have professional disagreements. it's another to have the level of personal animosity required to feed irwin this stuff on the regular.

as far as being untouchable, i think he mostly is, but i think people miss the reason for that--jeanie's happy with him. he's the one taking the hits for things like letting caruso walk over luxury tax issues and lowballing hurley/lue, when this is clearly about ownership being tight in the wrong ways (see quinn's piece below). note rob's never come out and said "i was told it was either THT or caruso, and i gambled on the wrong horse/appeased klutch". this is probably the truth. jeanie and company know it. rob could easily say it and look slightly better. but he hasn't. because he's a good soldier. this is why his job is safe. he accepts the lightning rod role.

i don't, either. we're a poorly-run organization, but it's from the top, not the middle. coaches don't want to work here for good reason. firing rob will solve absolutely nothing.

it's an interesting what if, because both aguirre and tarpley were really good (we later saw that team in the conference finals). it's entirely plausible we win either way.

situation is different anyway, because jeanie's not brokering deals in the current era, so standing up to her in that regard is not a thing that happens.

our problem is that we don't spend like our competitors do. this debacle is just the latest chapter in the same book. people lamenting the absence of expiring contracts at the deadline need to understand that a few months before, we just let 25 million dollars of expirings go for financial reasons. the reason the clippers keep making great trades is that they just eat salary and keep it in reserve so that when they sound out 40 million in trade for a semi-star, they don't lose three starters in the process.

this is an opinion piece, based on no claimed insider info. and i agree with it, pretty much 100%. same points i made all day yesterday.

 

wanted to separate this out: woj is doing damage control for us in this segment, partly on our behalf and partly so that dan hurley isn't the modern lamarcus aldridge (that looked as bad for aldridge as it did for us, imo). woj clearly was fed these talking points--which is always the case, i suppose--and he's a good storyteller. and it's a plausible story. the part that's still flimsy for me (and the reason i think we fed him some of this) is that he keeps talking about being the 6th highest paid coach in the nba if this happens, and he mentions the risk. both facts, but both feel like very carefully curated facts that sound different when separated from other facts (e.g., the coaching market that quinn refers to, the fact that we clearly placed hurley above all other candidates, etc.).

anyway, that segment is interesting look at spin control from both parties.

 

Also I'm not taking what he says seriously regarding Lakers rumors until I see that he and Rob are cool. Cause we don't know if they blame him and think they used us as leverage. We'll know if he has the next official move first, but until then I'm going to listen to the field (Stein, Haynes, Shams, Buha, Woike, and even Irwin).

Buha on his pod (weezy linked it above) said he's hearing a wide range of info about JJ
From he's the guy, he's the slight favorite, he's in the mix, he's not in the mix, to they've scrapped the entire list. It's going to be interesting to see what we do and how quickly. I don't think we have the time to restart the process based on how soon they want someone in the building.

At this point, give JJ an extra million or so, maybe an extra year on the deal to pad his ego. Series should be over soon and he can focus on something other than the Finals. Then work on spinning the narrative the best you can. He still checks the most boxes of what we're looking for and hoping to accomplish both short and long term.

 

it's clear the "insiders" are upset. both irwin and buha were acting like jilted lovers, imo. i really think they just got juked and not that this is some sort of odd conspiracy to legitimize a redick hire (which i'm still not sure is going to happen, btw). if it were, then wouldn't their "you can't keep anything a secret" angle be a logical impossibility?

anyway...my point is it doesn't matter who we hire. we let the cat out of the bag on who our top candidate was and then didn't close the deal. whatever comes next is a let down, basically no matter what. any hire will be viewed as the next darvin ham, vogel, etc.

i just don't see a path out. i really didn't think they'd let the story get that far without knowing. reminds me of when we traded all the extra salary to clear for kawhi and we didn't know for a fact he was coming. it's like the opposite of what pat riley would do, right? ugh.

 

I think we do have to completely regroup and start it over but on an accelerated timeline. I can see us ended up with one of the assistants we were looking at, but its tough to say at this point.

 

Easiest way to deal with the negative media guys is by proving them wrong. We had a real chance to do that here with Hurley. I think we still could have sent a message to everyone with a stronger offer.

That ship has sailed though and we are basically where we have unfortunately found ourselves several times in the Jeanie Buss era, trying to pivot from publicly whiffing on a target (whether its a coach or player).

Part of the frustration is how easy some of the issues of the organization are to spot. Some are easy to correct like beefing up staffing in the various functions in the org. Others are tougher to fix but can be done with a commitment from ownership. Those are textbook mistakes like organizational inertia (failing to change or adapt). They could literally scoop up some kid fresh out of business school at UCLA, USC, Stanford, etc who could point these things out.

Instead we are going to stumble through another hiring cycle depending on blind luck to get things right.

At some point, the front office has to stop shooting itself in the foot, get up to date on how things are done now instead of relying on how things used to be, and really move the franchise and its operation forward.

 

So it's who does Mitchell want

 

Also troubling, especially if we want an assistant with former HC experience. Teams are filling out their staffs this week. We've seen the Bucks and Suns making hires. All the more likely we target former Lakers for better/worse -- Dudz, 'Do, and guys who left with Vogel to Phoenix but are now unemployed.

 

Shams strikes back.

What a mess. Lol.

 

I never wanted JJ so I am glad to hear the interest has cooled off there.

 

Haha, while he’s at it, invent flying vehicles and go back in time and get Lebron circa 2012 to bring back to play next season.

Jeanie and Pelinka are f***ing chodes. I wouldn’t put them in charge of a fruit stand let alone a professional basketball team.

Until those two schlepers are gone and Lebron finally goes off into the sunset with whomever he’s jizzing over on Twitter every other week, this team will be stuck in quick sand.

 

What the hell did you call me?

 

shams is shcrambling, imo. he's BIG MAD that he looked dumb and is now dissembling and basically s***ting on the lakers in what is a pretty thinly-veiled tantrum.

lowe's trashing the lakers is funny, too. "they're a play-in team every year. what are they going to do without lebron?" i don't know, d***? what's any team going to do going forward? what's minny going to do with its huge payroll? what's boston going to do when horford finally ages out? what's okc going to do when they once again have to pay people? there are no certainties in this league, and there's certainly not a job opening where the future is guaranteed to be a fun ride.

yeah, there's a lot more pressure here, but ironically, a lot of that is because of these dweebs and how much they care about us. what really pisses them off is that they know that their secret favorite team's star STILL wants to play here. that is and always has been the plan, and it's worked and worked. that's why you take the job. not because of what's happening now, but because of what's always happened.

"people around the league", shams? maybe you should get to know some more because woj sonned your muckraking a** this week.

 

Definitely a lot of the talking heads in scramble mode trying to sound like they were on top of things.

 

I wonder if the FO is going to try the same “we want this coach to be a long term program builder for us” narrative if Borrego goes to Cleveland, JJ feels spurned and loses interest, and we end up having to hire whoever is left over as like our fifth option