With every remaining day of the Los Angeles Lakers season, it seems we continue to learn more about who has problems with who within the Lakers organization. And following yesterday afternoon’s brutal loss to the New York Knicks, the Lakers season got their own post-mortem in the nation’s paper of record.
Marc Stein of the New York Times did his postseason autopsy on what went wrong for the Lakers, which included an interesting note about management’s feelings towards the coaching staff.
Management, furthermore, is said to be dismayed by Walton’s refusal to hire a seasoned former head coach as his top assistant — something young coaches (Walton is 38) frequently do.
It’s an interesting criticism to be leveled by management, considering Walton does indeed have a former head coach on his staff: lead assistant coach Brian Shaw, who coached the Denver Nuggets from 2013-15. The rest of Walton’s staff, however, doesn’t have NBA head coaching experience, but that wasn’t the criticism they have of his staff.
Do they just someone older? Kurt Rambis? Phil Jackson? Or someone with more name recognition like Derek Fisher?
Over the course of the next few weeks, more stories like this will become the norm as folks within the Lakers organization try to protect themselves from the inevitable fallout of missing the playoffs with LeBron James.
