Ex-Coach Luke Walton Discussion

Why would I be terribly upset that Ennis played? Ennis wasn't great, but he brought good energy. Watching last night I almost preferred him to KCP.

 

I have indeed given up. I think Luke is a heck of an assistant coach, players love him (mostly), good motivator, can help with the little things. When it comes to being the head guy, in charge of lineups, installing a real offense, making adjustments on defense (STOP SWITCHING EVERY PLAY). The ONLY way I see him working long term is if he gets a crew of real assistants, with more experience that can make up for all the areas he lacks. Madden, Shaw, surfer dude, former Bulls guy, other guy in suit I’ve never heard of, former Arizona guy aren’t cutting it.

 

Ennis, Caruso, Brewer, Nance and Bogut. That odd five can't score but were in for a stretch until the deficit ballooned to fourteen. Subs in Clarkson, Hart, Kuzma and Randle. By then Wolves had a rhythm, too much of a hole to dig out of...

 

I am not giving up on a coach who is literally starting multiple rookies every game. As it pertains to our most impactful players, he essentially is coaching a college team against men. Does he make mistakes? Of course, but no one remembers the first couple seasons of other coaches who started young. Brad Stevens is an aberration, not the norm. I honestly don't know if Luke is our coach of the future or if he will end up a good coach. But I do know that he is young and learning and he trying to lead kids against men. Sometimes he reads situations wrong, but when dealing with kids it's hard to get a read on them sometimes.

I am not a Luke apologist. I'm just trying to be rational and look at all the facts and circumstances. It's way too early to come to a verdict on him. Our team is a bunch of kids and the last couple weeks we've been trading blows with the best teams the league has to offer. We have fought and fought which is partly a reflection of the coach.

 

Agreed. I think there are certain things that are pissing people off (rotations and Julius's minutes being the obvious) that are skewing the way they see Luke. Like you said, he's coaching a team with a LOT of rotation players that are either below the legal drinking age or just got past it. He's coaching children and getting some pretty decent results. We're not getting blown out regularly, we're fighting in games, and we're getting solid efforts on 9.5/10 nights. That's more than can be said for Byron and heck it's more than can be said of last year.

Now Luke has made plenty of mistakes and he seems to really be struggling juggling the FO desires regarding KCP and Julius specifically, but he's becoming a scapegoat here. In an impossible position, he's doing a passable job. He is a new coach just like most of these players are new. Meanwhile 32 games into the season and we're still the 10th ranked Defensive team by rating in the NBA. We're 10th in steals per game and 5th in blocks per game as a team. Luke deserves as much credit for that as he does blame for rotation problems and some offensive struggles.

 

B0ron had to start rookies too, doesn’t change the fact that he sucked. I don’t think that Luke sucks, I just think he’s an assistant, a very good assistant, but not ready for taking the Lakers back to glory. Sure that can change if we land 2 stars this offseason, but if we keep losing winnable games in the meantime we won’t be very appealing to those stars. And if we don’t land them, I have no faith that Luke can turn this ship around by building with our youth when he doesn’t even play our best ones the most minutes. He’ll end up a Del Harris.

 

I think we can both be right. It may have been too soon to give him the starting job, but he's not been as bad as it sometimes feels like he's been. Byron never even had as much success as this season if we ended it today. The fact that we're such a good defensive team has to count for something. In the Byron days we were literally nothing but a Kobe circus (all due respect to Kobe).

It may very well be that Luke isn't our head coach when we're great again, but all we're saying is he's not as bad as Byron or Mike Brown or D'Antoni (yeah I know D'Antoni is doing great now, but he didn't do that here so...).

 

Generally speaking I think Walton's been good for this young team. He's got his flaws but we're playing much better D this year, we're fighting hard and hardly getting blown out. We've played close games against the league's best.

My big complaint is the rotations which have been maddening at times. First and foremost comes his treatment of Randle which has been incomprehensible.

The one thing we cannot know for sure though is how much of that is based on his personal preference/bias against Randle, and how much of this is mandated by the FO.