The Los Angeles Lakers made a mess of their coaching situation on Wednesday, turning a seemingly sure thing of Ty Lue as the next head coach and ruining it to the point of Lue walking away from the position.
A host of reasons led to the parting of ways, partially due to the Lakers lowballing him and partially due to them reportedly attempting to force Jason Kidd onto the staff. On Thursday, even more details surfaced with the Lakers reportedly also attempting to force Kurt Rambis onto Lue’s staff, per Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo.
And what’s worse, asking Lue to take on Rambis as an assistant, a no-no according to sources close to Lue, feels like the Lakers want their walls bugged and feared a LeBron takeover — as if Lue would allow himself to be used as a puppet.
It’s yet another stunning development in the situation and one that further paints the Lakers in a terrible light. It’s the second person the team has tried to force onto a staff and neither coach has had success in the past. Even if the coaches they were attempting to plant on the bench were successful, no good coach is going to be ok with that and any coach who is fine with that won’t be successful.
The Lakers are so concerned about not having LeBron James take over the team that they’ve morphed into something far worse. The Lakers would look far better if they simply did let James control the team. They’re so concerned about looking like they have control that they’ve completely lost the plot.
In theory, the team has a chance to right the wrongs. But they’re too busy looking in the mirror at how great they once were that they’re no longer realizing the present around them.
