Luke Walton has been put on the hot seat by the Los Angeles Lakers. According to ESPN, after a two-game road trip in which the Lakers lost to the San Antonio Spurs and the Minnesota Timberwolves, Magic Johnson, Lakers President of basketball operations, has “admonished” Walton over the team’s start to the 2019 season. This is a bit of a shock considering Johnson’s previous comments.
“As I was talking to Luke [with Pelinka], we said, ‘Don’t worry about if we get out to a bad start,'” Johnson said back in September. “We have seen that with LeBron going to Miami, and we have seen that when he came back to Cleveland. He is going to struggle because there are so many new moving parts. But eventually we are going to get it, and we are going to be a really good team.”
It seems that the patience for the Lakers to start winning has now grown thin. It’s worth noting that Walton was hired by the previous Lakers front office led by Mitch Kupchak and Jim Buss and not by Magic and Pelinka. Maybe this is a situation where the new front office wants to bring in their own head coach. The prior comments made by Magic would suggest that’s not the case and that they fully stand by Walton, but with the new story coming out about Walton being “admonished” maybe all of that has changed.
Blaming the Lakers subpar start solely on Walton is beyond unfair. It’s not Walton’s fault that Rondo got suspended three games and Ingram got suspended four games to start the year. It’s not Walton’s fault that Magic and Pelinka were unable to bring another top tier player like Paul George or Kawhi Leonard to play alongside LeBron last summer. And it certainly isn’t Walton’s fault that the Lakers gave Kentavious Caldwell-Pope an inexplicable one-year $12 million deal to average a whopping 5.9 points per game.
At the end of the day, the only name that really matters when it comes to the Los Angeles Lakers is LeBron James. If LeBron wants Walton to be the head coach, Walton will remain the head coach. LeBron has had a rocky history with some of his past head coaches. There was the infamous bump with Erik Spoelstra as well as the sour relationship with David Blatt. If LeBron wants Walton gone it’s safe to assume he’ll be gone. It seems as if LeBron and Magic are on the same side when it comes to Lakers personnel moves. How else do you explain the contract given out to LeBron’s fellow Klutch Sports client Kentavious Caldwell-Pope?
Who could the Lakers replace Walton with? The first name that comes to mind is Tyronn Lue who coached (for lack of a better word) LeBron in Cleveland when they won the championship in 2016. The Cavaliers fired Lue six games into this season, so he is available. LeBron even expressed some positive thoughts about Lue on Twitter after his former head coach was fired. Another name the Lakers could replace Luke Walton with is Mark Jackson who is also a Klutch Sports client. Jackson did a good job in Golden State developing Curry and Thompson when they were young players so maybe he can do the same with the Lakers young core. Mark Jackson couldn’t get to that next level of making the Warriors a title contender like Kerr did, but with the Lakers he can focus on developing the young core and LeBron will be the one who takes them to the next level. Hiring Jackson wouldn’t make any sense if the Lakers are planning to trade some of their young players in the future for an all-star caliber player (I probably should’ve just replaced ‘all-star caliber player’ with Anthony Davis) since his only appeal would be to help the young players grow. However, I’m all for the Lakers hiring Mark Jackson since it’ll mean I no longer have to hear him say “hand down man down” for the 10,000th time when I’m trying to watch NBA games.
The Lakers are eight games into the season, and they are already drawing big headlines for a brawl and dissatisfaction with their head coach. With the best player in the league playing on the league’s most popular franchise, the spotlight on this team is enormous. It’s going to be a lot of fun to see what else unfolds in Laker Land this season. It’s Showtime.