However, the tough love he has displayed for the younger players is much needed to give them some attitude and fire. “That’s 100 percent”, Kupchak said.
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“I would love to be on a playoff team and not just be sitting and watching”, Young said.
Do the Lakers want Scott running that ship, in the final year of his contract (the four-year deal Scott signed in 2014 has a team option for 2017-18), no less?
The Lakers have the opportunity to go baby showtime with the right pieces around point guard D’Angelo Russell and shooting guard Jordan Clarkson.
“Barring something totally unforeseen Scott will coach the Lakers’ final 27 games of the season, but until the event he is actually brought back next season it is probably safe to assume he won’t be”, it said. According to the Los Angeles Times, Scott said Wednesday that Russell wouldn’t rejoin the starting lineup for Friday’s game against the Spurs and didn’t offer a timetable of when that might happen.
Barring any last-minute attractive deals, the Lakers are not expected to make any trades before Thursday’s noon deadline.
He rebounded, due to some very good timing, by acquiring Pau Gasol for pennies on the dollar in 2008 and the Lakers responded with three title runs and two rings, but each of the team’s “of-course-I-want-to-play-in-Los-Angeles” veteran acquisitions (Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash) have fallen flat over the course of his run. “I talked to a couple of them this morning about it, to finish the season strong”.
Kupchak continued, “There’s a lot of conversation, but I think it’s unlikely that anything significant will happen”.
“There is a lot of interest in our young players and I don’t think it’s likely we would do anything there”.
But Mark Medina of LA Daily News claimed that Byron Scott’s job as a coach is in jeopardy, even if the news reports filtering out suggest that that the Los Angeles Lakers plan on keeping him.
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Regardless, it appears Kupchak wants to get used to seeing Russell and his younger teammates play more.
