Good riddance. If I was Jim Buss I would be on the horn with Jerry Sloan.
Good riddance. If I was Jim Buss I would be on the horn with Jerry Sloan.
Or Mike D'Antoni
I don't think he is a good coach but this team blows
I'd call Phil
Thread title should read "Kobe fires Mike Brown".
We all know that is who made the decision.
I knew Brown was toast after Kobe was caught on camera glaring angrily at him during their 4th loss.
I am actually surprised that Brown wasn't fired after last season.
The team barely got past the Nuggets in the first round, and they got crushed by OKC in the second.
Admittedly, OKC was the better team, but the Lakers should have easily crushed the Nuggets, and they had way too much talent to get beat down like OKC the way they did.
I thought that the Buss family would realize that the Mike Brown experiment was a failure, and let him go. I especially thought that Kobe would make that happen, as he is entering his final two years and doesn't have time to spare if he wants that elusive sixth ring. I think Kobe had a soft spot for Mike Brown, which is why he stayed, but you could tell after that last game that any good feelings he had were gone.
I still think this team can be good, under the right leadership. Right now they are looking very confused, and are playing much less than the sum of their parts. Right now there is zero on-floor chemistry between these players.
The sad reality is that Phil Jackson has been the only successful Lakers coach since Pat Riley left in 1990.
Every other coach has been a complete fail.
Relieving Brown of his duties now also comes at a substantial cost, as he was in just the second year of a four-year, $18 million deal. The final year of that contract was only partially guaranteed.
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/s...ach-mike-brown
Such a mistake to give a 4-year deal to a coach, unless he is a proven legend like Jackson.
Brian Shaw has a good chance of being the Lakers' next coach because the players love him.
That is, unless Jackson can be talked out of retirement, which is possible, since he was seen yesterday watching the Lakers practice. The Lakers claim at the moment that he was just there because he's dating Jeannie Buss.
Having watched Brown in Cleveland for years, he isn't a horrible x and o's coach. Pretty solid defensive fundamentals, but he lacks gravitas, and he struggles to get players to buy into his system. For whatever reason, they like him, but don't take him serious. He just doesn't demand respect, and if he couldn't demand respect or be persuasive on a young Cleveland team, I figured he'd struggle with a collection of accomplished veterans. He also ran bad with LBJ and his posse of friends who needed their ass kissed all the time, and then he gets Kobe and the Lakers. That's running great as far as talent, but not when you're a young coach with an iffy resume and a Type B personality. There are only a handful of guys who can control that type of situation and Brown isn't one of them. You need to have a few rings.
Someone like Spolestra was in grave danger last year for the same reason, but Riley was unwavering in his support, so the Heat almost respected him by proxy. I didn't feel that kind of support for Brown and the Lakers from upper management. Brown learned great fundamentals as an assistant at San Antonio, but that roster was uniquely unselfish and easy to get along with.
Yes, all reports indicated that Brown was a nice guy and well-liked from a personality standpoint, but as you said, just not respected much as a coach.
Unfortunately this team is starting to remind me of the Lakers team that featured Gary Paton and Karl Malone, which ultimately got slammed by Detroit, four games to one. At least that team was pretty good in the regular season (56-26) and won the West (which wasn't very competitive that year), but they looked awful against Detroit. Part of that was due to injuries, but part was just four veteran superstars not fitting well together.
When a coach gets fired 6 games into an NBA season for a major market team to me it smells so much of the head honchos already having a plan in store just they probably won't want to announce it for a few days.
Phil Jackson is a likely candidate to be the next coach as it's a perfect fit for him and what he has done in his career coming into franchises that have built up championship contending teams and leading them to the top.
Well, he actually wanted to come back, but they didn't let him.
Tonight is the first game under the Mike D'Antoni regime.
Lakers actually went 2-0 under their interim coach, though they played two crappy teams.
All three victories so far have been against lousy competition (Detroit, Golden State, Sacramento).
Tonight they are up against San Antonio (in Los Angeles) and are tied 33-33 as I type this.
Supposedly Phil is insulted that they released details of his demands, and ultimately didn't hire him.
If he really did demand to not travel with the team on the road, I'm glad they didn't hire him. WTF is that shit?
Rick Bucher had an interesting insight into how this went down. He said Buss just led Phil on to make it look like he wanted him, but couldn't due to Phil's "outrageous demands". Mainly because 95% (actual poll) of the fans wanted Jackson back, and he refused to cede control back to him which would have been required.
So the whole Phil courtship was a charade, and Dantoni was the choice all along. He just had to create a scenario to save face with the fanbase, who he knew would overwhelmingly reject Dantoni over Jackson.
He even said the decision was already made Sat night, when Jackson invited the Lakers officials over to his house to discuss his return. They still went, but behind the scenes had no intention at all of ever hiring Jackson back.
Lakers just lost. The last play of the game, the Lakers had the ball, down two. Gasol fires a three and misses. Instead of Kobe crashing the boards, he threw his hands up and stood there. Then he started clapping while everyone was scrambling for the ball. Time expires.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)