1. Firing Frank Vogel won’t change a single thing for the Los Angeles Lakers
Sports fans often have to find excuses for their team’s poor play instead of sometimes just admitting that the team is not as good as we expected. I am guilty of it all the time and this is something that Laker fans are doing to cope with the fact that this team is underwhleming.
There is always going to be multiple sources of blame before fans realize that the team is just not that good and the first source of blame is the head coach. Again, has Frank Vogel been perfect? Not at all. There are certain changes that he absolutely has to make moving forward. That being said, will firing him change anything? Not at all.
This team is not struggling because of Frank Vogel. Fans may hate to hear this but this team is struggling because it is not well put together. In fact, this is more on Rob Pelinka than it is Vogel as he has given him a roster that simply does not work.
First of all, the depth of the team is not even close to what we expected it to be. The Lakers bright in a lot of one-trick ponies who don’t play defense and only shoot threes. The result has been the team turning into one of the worst defensive teams in the league while having nine (of 13) players with a negative Box Plus/Minus.
That means that only four players have been “above-average” this season. That is not a formula for winning basketball.
The depth of this team is a problem and Russell Westbrook simply does not fit. He is a turnover machine that demands a high usage rate and forced the team to go out and only sign veteran-minimum shooters because they traded all of their depth for a guy who is probably the second-most overpaid player in the league behind John Wall.
This is not a Frank Vogel problem, it is a roster problem. The team can fire Frank Vogel and bring back prime Phil Jackson and they are not going to play much better than they currently are. This brings us to the second point…