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LOS ANGELES — The Lakers didn’t just lose their man Monday when Dan Hurley turned down their offer to be the team’s head coach. They also seem to have lost the thread.
That the UConn coach turned down the Lakers reported six-year, $70 million offer is not on its face a shock. Hurley has a chance to chase a third straight NCAA championship, a feat not accomplished since John Wooden 50 years ago. The Lakers job may also have been a poisoned chalice — all the glitz and purple-and-gold glamor on the outside, but something much trickier to navigate once ensconced in the actual job.
And, related and connected to the next point, there’s no guarantee a hard-charging, no-NBA-experience hire like Hurley would fit well with LeBron James. The KIng’s exacting standards, particular view of how his teams should operate and preference to be a partner with a head coach rather than a subordinate would have been interesting to see with Hurley, to say the least.
No, the real surprise here is that the Lakers do not seem to know what they’re doing or whom, exactly, they’d like to become.
Let’s start with the embarrassment of chasing a real gamble — and Hurley was just that — before being spurned in such a public, slow-moving manner. It makes the Lakers look small. It provides a sheen of amateurism. It begs the question why they’d put themselves out there like for a college coach who didn’t want the job.
Hurley very well may have been a huge success in Los Angeles. He is, obviously, a proven winner. Scouts and front-office personnel who have scouted UConn’s draft prospects have been impressed with the tactical level of those teams, particularly on the offensive end. Maybe Hurley would have made that precarious leap from the heights of college basketball to the much more complicated terrain of NBA head coaching with rare acumen.
A few have done it successfully — Brad Stevens and Billy Donovan are the list — but the past does not always predict the future. And the longer list of failed college head coaches at the NBA level left many in Boston at Games…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/lakers-get-publicly-embarrassed-by-dan-hurley-and-show-the-nba-they-dont-really-have-a-plan/
Author : Bill Reiter
Publish date : 2024-06-10 22:18:55
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