Crazy times in Laker Land

                Well the Lakers have had quite an exciting couple of days there, after shockingly firing Mike Brown after 5 games and replaced him with Mike D’Antoni and not Phil Jackson.  There are many ways to look at how this whole situation unfolded.  How they treated all coaches involved, which coach would have fit best for the team and how the team will do in the future as a result of the moves.  I’ll try to address as many of these issues as I can one at a time.

                Well first of all there was the decision to fire Mike Brown.  Look if you are looking for someone to defend Mike Brown and his resume then you have come to the wrong place.  He installed an offense, that while clearly designed to maximize the impact of Kobe Bryant, an offense Kobe wanted, did very little to benefit the rest of the team.  While it is true the offense ranked much higher than people realize, 6^th in the NBA, but that was more likely due to playing against some really bad teams and scoring easily against them.  The real problem with Mike Brown is that he was never able to get the defense put together or to get a firm handle on his rotation.  The issue is that there is never a situation where firing a coach after 5 games comes from good management from above.  This means that they were never comfortable with him as the coach from the start, and if this was the case then he shouldn’t have been the coach to begin with.  Most of these very same problems existed for last year’s Laker’s team and if they weren’t comfortable with him then shouldn’t have given him training camp to install his offense.  This goes to the larger organizational dysfunction that could ever result in a scenario where a coach could be fired after 5 games. 

                Then the Lakers seemed to transition to the idea of hiring the living legend Phil Jackson to come back and coach the team.  There seem to be two scenarios existing right now why this didn’t occur.  In the Laker’s version of the story they reached out to Jackson and when he made a ton of crazy demands, including management purview, travel needs, and ownership equity the Lakers decided to go in a different direction.  In Jackson’s version of the story, he was given the impression by the Laker’s management that he would have full opportunity to either accept or decline the offer by Monday.  He didn’t make any crazy demands and financially said that the decision to come back or not would not in fact come down to money.  Then he said the Lakers hired Mike D’Antoni before getting back to him because Laker’s owner Jim Buss wanted to embarrass Jackson and had no intention of hiring him in the first place.   Also as an interesting side note that should probably be mentioned, Jackson is currently dating Buss’s sister.  I honestly don’t know whose side of the story is correct, but my guess is it is a combination of the two. 

                Well now if you are looking at which of the two coaches is the better fit for the time as of now.  Well first of all there is no question that Phil Jackson is better at handling the unique personalities that are in the Lakers’ locker room.  He has the track record and has the respect of Kobe Bryant, a notoriously hard player to coach, and would unquestionably have the respect of the entire locker room.  Not to say D’Antoni would be bad, Nash loved playing for him, Kobe really likes him and the rest of the team seems to respect him.  The bigger question will be though whose offensive system works better for the talent on hand.  If Nash is there and healthy then it seems like without question that D’Antoni is the better given the success he has had with Nash in the past.  The pick and roll potential that he has with Howard combined with Gasol’s passing and Kobe’s back cutting abilities seems to be a perfect mix.  The offense is built for Nash and his strengths, unlike the Triangle offense which has a tendency to mitigate the point guard’s influence.  Overall considering Nash is on contract longest, and Howard will likely be on the team for the longest period of time it seems smart to hire a coach who plays to those two players’ strengths.

                However there are serious reasons that this might be an issue and the D’Antoni hiring could prove to be problematic.  The foundation of D’Antoni’s offense is the existence of an elite pick and roll point guard, of which Nash is the best.  The issue I have is that how sure are we that Nash is going to be the same player this season that he historically has been?  The man has been the symbol of health in old age for years in Phoenix staying in pristine shape and only seeing slight slippage in game as he advanced in age.  My concern is that away from Phoenix’s famous training staff he might begin to show his age and he might start to have injury problems.  He has already gotten hurt in Phoenix, and injury that will likely force him to miss more time this season than he did in any season in his return to Phoenix.  His first game in Los Angeles, he didn’t look like his normal self, but there is a chance that it was just a result of the fact he was uncomfortable in the Princeton offense.  What Los Angeles is banking on in hiring Mike D’Antoni is that Steve Nash is going to return better than ever.  They don’t have any backup point guard who can remotely compete with that level of play and Kobe while a great player isn’t designed to be a pick and roll point guard.  Steve Nash better be great because if he’s not then quite simply the Lakers won’t be. 

                The underlying issue with the team that was actually the main reason for the Lakers’ early season struggles was the health of Dwight Howard.  Howard the last few seasons has been the most important defensive player in basketball, a player who singlehandedly changes a defense from horrible to above average just by being on the floor.  This season Howard hasn’t been that player and the Lakers’ defense has suffered as a result of it.  He has been slow on defense and cannot be an impact help defender the team so desperately needs.  Really this is going to be the team’s biggest issue going forward bigger than the coaching change and bigger than Nash.  Dwight Howard needs to be by far the best center in basketball and the best defense player in the league if the Los Angeles Lakers are going to be competing for an NBA Championship.