Lakers rumors: New coach candidate may foreshadow a Westbrook return

The Los Angeles Lakers have one primary goal in the 2022 summer: build a team that is good enough to contend for a championship next season. All of the Lakers rumors that are emerging all line up with this potential goal. In order to accomplish that goal, the Lakers have to take two primary steps this summer.

First, the Lakers need to find a head coach that improves on Frank Vogel. While Vogel ended up being the fall guy for something that was not even his fault, hiring the wrong head coach could make things even worse. A great hire may not end up changing much, but a bad hire could snowball things even worse.

The other step is getting rid of Russell Westbrook. That is easier said than done, especially considering recent Lakers rumors indicate the team is not interested in trading for someone like Gordon Hayward (which the team is wrong about, by the way).

Rob Pelinka knows — or at least he should — how difficult it is going to be to trade Westbrook this summer. Thus, the Lakers could be preparing for a reality in which Westbrook is still in LA next season and the team has to revisit a trade idea at the deadline. This is a situation that is perhaps the most realistic as it was explained by Bill Simmons.

The latest Lakers rumors about Scott Brooks could be foreshadowing this Russell Westbrook reality.

According to Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times, Scott Brooks has been added to the list of potential coaching candidates for the Lakers along with another new addition in Alex Jensen. Brooks is the more interesting of the two candidates considering his relationship with Russell Westbrook.

Brooks has coached Westbrook on two different teams in his career and Westbrook played his best basketball under Brooks. He originally coached him on the Oklahoma City Thunder and then the two were reunited on the Washington Wizards.

Westbrook has been more than complimentary of Brooks in the past and Brooks even called Westbrook the second-greatest point guard of all time, only behind Magic Johnson. Of all the potential coaches to be added to a list of candidates, Brooks’ inclusion certainly is interesting.

Westbrook made it very clear in his exit interview that he did not like how the 2021-22 season went down, even saying that he wasn’t sure about what Frank Vogel’s issue was with him. Obviously the Lakers are not going to make decisions just to please Westbrook, but trying to get this to work could be on the team’s radar.

If the Lakers cannot find a trade partner for Westbrook then they have no choice but try and make moves that make Westbrook a better asset for the team. LA has already sunk so much into this Westbrook experiment and downright giving up may not be in the team’s best interest if they cannot trade him.

If the Lakers can hire a coach that actually motivates Westbrook to make changes to his game then LeBron James is going to sign off on it. Will Westbrook actually make those changes? It is unlikely, as he never has in his career. But the Lakers still have to try.