The pressure is on Kupchak to flip the script this summer, and the only way Los Angeles can instantly turn into a title contender is by trading their upcoming lottery pick.
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Luke Walton announced he will join the Los Angeles Lakers as their new head coach following this season as an assistant with the Warriors. And, lets be honest, there’s more of a chance that the Lakers don’t land the top pick than anything. “But it’s bad news for all of us”. No team centered around either player will ever win an National Basketball Association title, so why risk it?
Walton hopefully will be better at recruiting free agents to come play for the Lakers than any of the recent Lakers head coaches because the roster needs veterans who can mentor the young players and show them how it’s supposed to be done in the National Basketball Association.
Former Los Angeles Lakers coach Byron Scott has been making the media rounds since being fired as Lakers coach two weeks ago.
Lakers Nation reported that the former Denver Nuggets head coach and Phil Jackson pupil is “at the top of a short list of candidates” that could be with Walton on the Lakers’ bench starting in 2016-2017. He followed it by suggesting that if those picks came with last year’s second-overall pick point guard D’Angelo Russell, there would definitely be a meeting between both teams.
“If I knew this was coming, I would have played Lou [Williams], Brandon [Bass] and guys like that a whole lot more”, Scott said, referring to his veterans in an interview with this newspaper. Trust being a big one of them. Personally, I am interested to see what type of moves and decisions Walton has in mind for the Lakers.
Buss said Walton deserved a lot of credit for Warriors’ unprecedented success which includes registered a 39-4 record when head coach Steve Kerr was sidelined with back injury. He might have been a role player, but he won two championships and shared a team with Kobe Bryant, who many stars grew up idolizing. The Lakers hired a coach in Luke Walton that franchises were absolutely falling all over themselves to corral, and freed from the excuses that Kobe’s 21.5 shots per 36 minutes and Scott’s presence provided, the triptych needs to take a major step forward in 2016-17 and beyond. Signed as a free agent from Japan in the offseason, Maeda has a 3-1 record after five starts with a 1.41 earned run average. The Lakers stink. They’re in the middle of an extensive rebuild in a very tough Western Conference and look to be at least two or three years away from really contending.
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They were very supportive of that, which helped, and then obviously winning 24 straight took all that pressure off and we could just focus on what we were seeing, what we still needed to work on.
