If the Los Angeles Lakers choose to move on from head coach Luke Walton sooner than later, these three coaches could be under consideration to replace him.
Luke Walton‘s proverbial hot seat as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers began warming up the moment LeBron James signed as free agent this summer. For the first time, he had to deal with legitimate expectations for a Lakers team that had none in his prior two seasons.
At the beginning of this year, it looked as if he was managing the new expectations relatively well, and had the Lakers at 20-14, beating the juggernaut Golden State Warriors on Christmas day.
However, it has been all downhill from that point, and a lot of that can be blamed on the injury bug biting nearly the whole roster, including James on Christmas. But a bunch of the blame should be directed at head coach Luke Walton as well.
It has been one bad look after another, from reports of him getting into arguments with veteran players and his rotations rightfully coming under scrutiny nearly every night.
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After these last three dreadful road losses to Atlanta, New Orleans and Memphis, it seemed like he has struggled to motivate this group against the lowliest of competition, and in the process has made the Lakers playoff chances look slim.
It is going to be hard to even suggest bringing back Walton for next season if the Lakers do indeed miss the playoffs, considering LeBron has not missed that stage since his second season and has been to the last eight NBA finals.
LeBron has been known to steamroll coaches when the team does not meet expectations throughout his career. The most recent example being when the Cleveland Cavaliers fired David Blatt because he did not appear to handle the circus surrounding LeBron well enough, and he even made it all the way to the finals.
If the Lakers do fail to make a push to the playoffs in these next 21 games, then who could the Lakers call on to lead the team?
The Las Vegas betting odds on who the Lakers coach next season will be were released not too long ago and had Luke Walton ranked as low as third on the list. It had some logical names that will be included on this list as well, and even amusingly included LaVar Ball with +50000 chance to be the next head coach.
Now, there is no way LaVar will step foot close to the bench, but there are some coaching candidates available that the Lakers would probably work better with moving forward rather than Luke Walton.
Right now, James is a liability on defense and there is no one willing to call him out on it, including Walton. Instead, James is the one doing all the criticism of teammates in the media and that might be less of a problem if he was playing for a coach that he had more respect for basketball-wise.
Another reason why Walton is likely headed out of town at the end of the year is that Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka were not the ones to hire him in the first place. Walton was a Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak hire, and “Maginka” might want to head into another direction with their guy for the foreseeable future.
Here are three potential coaches that could be an upgrade if the Lakers do decide to move on from their young head coach in the offseason.