While much of the drama of the Dan Hurley-Los Angeles Lakers dance revolved around the reporting dynamic between Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski offering dueling perspectives about the hiring process, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Lakers swung for the fences with a big offer and failed to land a major coaching candidate. And for longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke, it’s another humbling moment for the NBA’s flagship franchise.
In a column on Tuesday after Hurley decided to stay in Connecticut and try to lead the Huskies to a three-peat as national champions, Plaschke unloaded on the franchise for their failure to land a top-tier coaching candidate.
This is humiliating for Lakers fans to watch a college coach who has never worked a moment in the NBA refuse a chance to work for the most celebrated of NBA franchises.
This is demeaning for a Lakers team that possesses arguably the greatest player in basketball history, and one of the top 10 players in the current league, and yet were still snubbed as if they were the junior varsity.
This is disillusioning for a Lakers franchise that Hurley personally examined during his recent interview here, saw the best they had to offer, and said … nah.
Plaschke compared Hurley’s rejection to the time the Lakers offered the job to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski to stay in college.
Perhaps it’s a little harsh from Plaschke’s perspective given how much success Hurley has had in college and how difficult it must be to leave a place where he and his family are obviously comfortable and found a lot of success. And as many voices including Zach Lowe have argued, it’s not like the Lakers are an immediate title contender, especially in a stacked Western Conference where they’ve recently been little more than a play-in round team.
But lest you think Plaschke was just frustrated with the Hurley process, he also had some stinging words for the team’s other leading candidate – JJ Redick – calling him a “horrible choice” for the job.
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