The Los Angeles Lakers put an official end to their dreadful 2021-22 season on Monday with exit interviews that only raised more questions about a pivotal offseason ahead.
Frank Vogel was officially fired that afternoon, more than 12 hours after that news had been broken, and the Lakers are already attached to three current head coaches as potential candidates: Quin Snyder, Doc Rivers, and Nick Nurse. All three of those coaches will be leading teams into the playoffs next week, with Rivers and Nurse squaring off in the first round, and as such you can expect all of them to offer forceful denials of interest and/or deflections that the only thing they are focused on right now is their team if asked about L.A.
That won’t stop the rumor mill from churning, and as the Lakers beat tries to fill time in a year without postseason basketball, every day seems to bring a new update on a coaching search that has only just begun. Tuesday brought a pair of reports regarding candidates and interest, internally and externally, which may indicate how quickly the Lakers may have to move on from their initial top targets.
Broderick Turner of the L.A. Times reports that Snyder, who many expect to take a serious look at opportunities outside of Utah this summer, didn’t appreciate how the Lakers bungled Vogel’s firing, particularly leaking that he was out at the final buzzer of the regular season finale.
Not only is Snyder under contract with the Jazz for at least one more season, people not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said he has become less interested in the Lakers’ job because of how the Vogel firing was handled.
It’s not the first time this front office has stumbled over the details and many were disappointed with the treatment of a championship coach like Vogel on his way out the door. Nurse’s candidacy may only live in the dreams of the Lakers, as there are a number of roadblocks to poaching him from Toronto, namely that they need permission from the Raptors just to talk with him, which Toronto has no reason to provide. With the report on Snyder souring on the chance to be in L.A. and Nurse likely not being a viable candidate, that leaves Doc Rivers as the last of the initial targets — and if the Sixers have an early exit, he may be very much available — which means the Lakers pool will have to expand even more.
Sam Amick of The Athletic offered a little nugget in his latest piece that LeBron James has a candidate in mind: ESPN analyst and former Warriors coach Mark Jackson. Amick says James would be “enthused” by Jackson taking the reins in L.A., but notes that James didn’t get his wishes in the last Lakers coaching search when the Lakers wouldn’t give Ty Lue the offer he wanted and then hired Vogel over Jason Kidd.
Rob Pelinka said they would be methodical in their coaching search on Monday, and while the hope is to have someone in place by June’s NBA Draft, there isn’t a hard deadline for making that hire. As such, expect plenty more names to be attached to the Laker job in the coming months as we aren’t likely to see a swift resolution.
