The Los Angeles Lakers have struggled this season after making some questionable decisions in the offseason. The Russell Westbrook trade was a move that had a sense of desperation to it and at the time, it didn’t seem to make much sense for the Lakers.
Every Westbrook naysayer has been proven correctly thus far as Westbrook is not a fit for the team and his contract restricted what the team could do around its stars. While Rob Pelinka has received a lot of the blame for that trade, there is a new source of blame that Laker fans should be outraged with.
Kurt Rambis is in the limelight right now in wake of reports that Frank Vogel’s job security is in question. It has become clear that Rambis and Pelinka are involved in the team’s game-planning, and quite frankly, it is hurting the team.
Rambis has reportedly been involved in the pre-game coaching meetings and is pushing Frank Vogel to play bigger lineups with Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan. Has this guy watched the Lakers this season, let alone the modern NBA? That is exactly the last thing the Lakers should be doing.
Just the fact alone that Rambis thinks this is a good idea for the Lakers is telling on what Laker fans should think about him. The senior basketball advisor may not have been in the limelight in recent years with the team’s success, but it isn’t hard to come to a certain conclusion…
Kurt Rambis should not have this much pull on the Los Angeles Lakers!
What has Kurt Rambis accomplished that should give him this much say over the Los Angeles Lakers? Cool, he won four championships with the team as a role-playing power forward who was not even that great. Are we going to give Robert Horry the GM job next?
MUST-READ: 3 potential trade packages for Dwight Howard
Rambis has done nothing in his post-playing career to warrant this kind of decision-making. Rambis had some executive experience as an assistant GM with the Lakers back in the early 2000s but quite frankly, his entire career has been based on coasting on the success of the franchise.
Rambis also coasted on the Lakers’ success with Kobe Bryant as an assistant coach. The Lakers would have been just as good without Rambis and he should not have gotten much credit for the team’s success. However, he did, and he landed his only head coaching job with the Minnesota Timberwolves back in 2009.
How did that go? Rambis lasted two seasons. His T-Wolves teams finished with a combined record of 32-132. His career winning percentage as a head coach (which includes taking over for a fired Del Harris in 1999 and a fired Derek Fisher in 2016) is .284.
Here is a fun fact! Kurt Rambis has the third-lowest winning percentage of any coach in NBA history with at least 200 games coached. But this is the guy that the Lakers are trusting to make decisions and have a say on Frank Vogel’s decisions, only to turn it around and put Vogel on the hot seat because of it???
Laker fans should be outraged. Kurt Rambis should not be put in this position of power and quite frankly, the team feels just as dysfunctional as it did when Magic Johnson resigned and outed Rob Pelinka.
The Los Angeles Lakers are lucky LeBron James wanted to come to Hollywood and make movies and convinced Anthony Davis to force his way to LA. If not, who knows what the team would look like.