Assistant Coach Discussion: McMillan And Brooks

if he's the swashbucklin' badass everyone claims, this was the job for him, imo. everybody talking about our job being a bad one (i agree, pragmatically), but we need someone wired differently. just like with our star players (please, basketball gods, deliver luka), we need someone who actually wants the smoke. they don't say it; they want it.

one thing i'll say for ty lue is that he definitely wanted it and understood what that meant. does james borrego want it? i don't think so. he should go to cleveland. adelman should go to whichever sacramento or new orleans or whomever fires their guy for doing exactly what everyone does there.

we need someone who doesn't give a s*** and is motivated by succeeding in the most challenging circumstances and on the biggest stage. if you want to exceed low expectations, go work for oklahoma city.

 

i think if our offer was big enough, it might have worked. people are saying opportunities will be there in two years or whatever, and maybe they will. but will they be 6 year, 100 million dollar type opportunities?

i also thought hurley had an extension offer already on the table from uconn, and that it hasn't changed? do we know that this leverage ploy was successful? if so, i might lean towards the "he played us" angle.

as of now, my thought is that he was intrigued by the possibility, but that our offer wasn't big enough to make him leave a very comfortable (and lucrative) position. he won't say it, but i think he was hoping for what i was expecting: a huge, sort of crazy offer.

it's hard to find old coaching contract numbers, but we offered coach k 5/40 in 2004, which i think would have made him the highest paid coach in the league? that's what i was expecting, tbh. and i'm not saying i think that would have been brilliant. but it's not my money, and it doesn't hamper any other aspect of team building (or doesn't have to).

 

If you are going to uproot your family and risk failure on the biggest level in his position, you need that golden parachute if it doesn't work out.

Lakers tried to get away with a competitive offer, and what they needed was an amazing offer. Didn't happen, and so here we are doing damage control.

 

My $.02

I think the offers will get bigger when he's ready. The coaching salaries are going up in general and this is before the TV money starts flooding in. In 3-4 years, $12m a year might be a cheap deal. I've said before I think it's the Nets (billionaire owner and close to home) when he makes the leap.

He's had the UConn offer in front of him for awhile and there's been negotiations back and forth. Every report I've read says he's now getting a bigger deal from them, haven't seen any specifics on what that could look like.

He definitely was looking for headline money to even really entertain it. Even if it wasn't all about money and even if there was any interest there, he's not coming here for less (as Cranjis broke down). I don't know if $100m would've done it but that's what his camp leaked via the college basketball Insider who made the rounds. I don't know Hurley, but I know the type. To that type the headline "100 million dollar coach" can be more significant than the actual paycheck.

 

yeah, i think i agree. the only caveat is that it's possible hurley won't be as hot a candidate in two or three years.

but i can't shake the feeling that if the offer was just huge, he'd have taken it. he can't/won't say that, though (he's bought a TON of goodwill from the fans and media by turning us down on principle), so we can't know.

 

Most of us have a number in our heads that we would pack everything up over. Personally, I'm comfortable right now, but there is definitely a number that would get me to move and I've told some companies that. Some have still wanted to talk, so I did out of kindness and to keep my network open, but when we got down to business they thought I would come down on my number and it was a polite no.

When someone is happy, content and succeeding, its a big ask for them to stop everything and start over. That's before you start factoring in the wife, children, cost of living, lifestyle changes, etc.

We kept hearing of a godfather offer and that was intentional. Hurley had a price that he would uproot everything over and I believe the front office was well aware of it. Had we offered that then I do think he takes it. At the very least, everyone would see that offer and question him for not taking it instead of calling us cheap.

And if we didn't think we wanted to meet that number because he hasn't coached in the league, then that's fair and we should've shut down the whole thing right then and there. A simple "we have a number of candidates we are interviewing and Hurley is certainly one of them. We will leave no stone unturned in trying to find the best fit for our team" or something to that effect when Woj was dropping his bombs, cools down the chatter a bit and at least sends the signal that we aren't throwing all of our eggs in one basket.

Instead, we just let the talk keep going (which I feel like we always do) and now we are here.

It just makes me wonder who is in our PR department and what exactly do they do because they certainly do not seem to ever control narratives or spin things in our favor.

If Rob is our shark / attack dog, then there should be an equal component on the other side that actively manages our public image and protects the brand. Someone should be the public face that pops up on talk shows, puts fans at ease and picks apart the media narratives against us. Should have been Magic but we know how that went. Still, there are other big personalities out there that we have employed. I'd just like to see on offense sometimes against the negative press instead of constantly seeming to be on our heels fighting off what literally at times feels like the whole sports world.

TL/DR - This was yet another rant about the holes in our front office.

 

lol, i just read a blurb today about how the pelicans had some folks leave in their front office and are trying to plug holes, whereas our philosophy in the front office seems like our philosophy on defense: leave it all to AD (rob).

 

Right. Its even more frustrating because a lot of this stuff wouldn't even cost that much money.

 

right. i mean, how much were we paying magic to basically sabotage the entire organization?

and i think some of the "keep the circle tight" stuff intensified after that--probably from both jeanie and rob. rob needs to hire a general manager--someone with experience and lots of league connections. he can still do a lot of what he does, but having another perspective that isn't kurt rambis or tim harris is important, imo. good organizations aren't entirely incestuous. in academia, there are strong proscriptions against hiring your own trainees, and this has always made sense to me (one of the few aspects of the academic organizational model that does).

 

Anyone know if this interview ended up happening? Looks like the tweet may have been deleted. Not sure if maybe they cancelled it because of the Jerry West news

While I wouldn’t expect Hurley to be honest about his intentions and whether he was just trying to leverage UConn, I honestly expect a public interview by Hurley would be in our favor.

I’d have to imagine that he wants to keep the door open for a future NBA coaching job, so I think he’d likely be very complimentary to the Lakers FO and their vision, and probably downplay the financial aspect.

Anything else would be a bad look for UConn. He can’t come out and say “Well I really wanted to leave, but Pelinka has no idea what he’s doing and Jeanie was too cheap to give me a serious offer, so I had no choice but to return to UConn”

 

Agreed. Its honestly why I never liked hiring Magic to begin with despite him still being my favorite Laker player. You can't always just hire within the family. Constantly looking for Laker ties limits us.

 

I also expect him to be complimentary of the Lakers and to push back on some of the narratives out there. Definitely think he wants to try to debunk the talk of him and Woj cooking this up to get him a raise.

 

hurley will no doubt deny he used the lakers as leverage (obviously)

i don't blame him for not taking the job. too much uncertainty in the future and the immense amount of pressure from the media and fans, not to mention how they did vogel dirty just a couple years removed from a title

 

big difference is vogel had a short term contract. if he had a long-term contract, he probably doesn't get fired, tbh.

 

Yeah I don't buy that 'bad job's narrative either. It's still the freaking Lakers. I'm not saying we should live in the past, but it's a source of pride to any person around basketball to be called the Lakers coach. It's just dope. Walking everyday in those lockers and halls where Shaq and Kobe made history and in a franchise tied to so many greats and historic moments of the sport.
Of course we can't just rely on that, like we did before and have fell behind in a lot of structural things within an organization, but we are improving, we also have one of the best ever (it's also a proudful achievement to spend a year or 2 with f***in LeBron), we have AD and know that we always want to compete. It's much more awesome to win with the Lakers than with Memphis or even Denver lol. In the end they are all regular people, who grew up watching the sport and unless they are haters, it's a sense of pride to represent one of the best franchises in any sport.

So I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of guys who would love to take this job.
Now, we do have to keep pushing to get better, be professional in our departments and follow and contribute to this new generation of NBA, data-driven, PR aware and player centric

I still think to give more money to Hurley than Spo gets is crazy business. He did NOTHING to deserve that. That's a huge overpay that I don't sign of.

I understand we probably could have gone a bit higher considering the context of this signing, but not to those values. He could seriously flop really hard because he doesn't know how to talk to men and fail all over. NBA stopped being this place where hardcore approach pays off. I mean even college is starting to change because guys are making millions and not taking that crap.
Hurley even said on how he builds its roster that he's lucky to be in Connecticut where it's cold and boring so guys who sign for the program are hard-wired and know what they want, instead of being in Florida or Cali where so many distractions are available. It's defo a huge adjustment for him in that regard and I wouldn't pay him above Spo before I see that.
And we aren't yet talking about coaching 82 to 100 games, no practices, manage rotations through the year, manage egos and minutes, manage the press every single day, national attention, huge scrutiny every day, adjustments in playoffs.

He could fail miserably and we be tied up on him for post AD, paying him an insane amount of money.

Also, I don't think a guy should come here because we pay more. Leave that to the Clippers. We should pay a fair face value, which we did, imo. He would be top 5 earner in the league, highest rookie coach salary ever and with a gig on the team that most people around the world know about regarding basketball.
I understand if it wasn't enough for him, but that means for me he wasn't the guy we need, specially long term.

This is very true, great take.

I think our PR management is a disaster. With Russ was the same. It's good to know that Rob pulled a great trade for us regardless of the media, but I think we should be able to control a bit better the narrative

 

Was wondering where Jake has been during the rumor season. He's been pretty quiet so far.

 

cleveland to the lakers:

 

Meanwhile I'm waiting patiently

 

agree with most of your post, but my counterpoint is who cares? if he fails, we fire him and move on. again, we were prepared to make coach k the highest paid coach in the league 20 years ago. just weird to me that we offered what we did.