- Feb 8, 2009
- 17,729
- 24,932
Keep Monk and everybody else can go.
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
Keep Monk and everybody else can go.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,900
- 129,228
Everybody wants to go out a champion like the Bulls or a soft exit like the Spurs, but when contenders usually go out, they go out with a bang. Just look at the Lakers history, from Showtime to Shaq-Kobe to Kobe-Pau.
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,393
- 45,153
Monk - yes
Dwight - yes
Gabriel - no
Melo - no
Ariza - hell no
Bazemore - hell no
Ellington - nah
Bradley - no
Augustin - maybe
Last edited:
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,900
- 129,228
I feel like Dwight can still be a third string center? Gotta get a stretch five to compliment AD and Dwight though. Also be nice to get a big like Kieff, Gabriel is sort of that.
- Oct 28, 2013
- 42,743
- 178,557
- Feb 17, 2019
- 16,722
- 17,711
No
darthska
Staff member
- Apr 30, 2004
- 47,019
- 31,691
So it's all their fault? I can't believe you think that if we move those 2, it's WINNING TIME!
I hope we do move them, just so I can laugh when they're gone and we still suck. It's their fault Ariza is old? It's their fault Melo & THT regressed? Poor roster construction, you're just putting that on them and shipping them out? Unbelievable. 
AD wins a championship and 2 years later you would move him. Russ averaged a triple double but yeah, he's the problem.I can't believe you think moving them fixes everything. It's not their fault but you'll see.
-foe
- Sep 19, 2012
- 7,741
- 10,714
Keep Gabriel, I think the rest can go.
- Aug 6, 2012
- 57,881
- 61,629
Monk - Yes
Dwight - No
Gabriel - Yes
Melo - No
Ariza - No
Bazemore - Yes
Ellington - No
Bradley - No
Augustin - Yes
- Oct 23, 2014
- 1,603
- 1,856
Knowing Lakers, they're going to re-sign the 2020 championship team 
- Jul 16, 2017
- 22,590
- 16,315
Monk - maybe. For cheap. Nunn opting in and if healthy already serves that purpose. Leaning no. Too small for the price.
Dwight - no
Gabriel - yea
Melo -no
Ariza - no
Bazemore -no
Ellington -no
Bradley -no
Augustin-15th guy yes. But no.
- Jan 18, 2006
- 40,393
- 45,153
So it's all their fault? I can't believe you think that if we move those 2, it's WINNING TIME!
I can't believe you think moving them fixes everything. It's not their fault but you'll see.
-foe
We deserve it don't we?
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,900
- 129,228
Exclusive: Lakers coach Frank Vogel opens up on losing season, ‘imperfect’ roster and what comes next after elimination
Long before injuries sent the Lakers spiraling — first out of title contention, and then the playoff picture entirely — Frank Vogel recognized cracks in the foundation of the team that was built to bring an 18th title to Los Angeles.
He recognized it before even the first regular-season game.
“It did not look good,” Vogel told The Athletic on Tuesday.
He could have been referencing any of the blowout losses the Lakers endured, or any of the Lakers’ short-lived hodgepodge lineups. But in truth, Vogel’s concerns began before the blockbuster trio of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook even played a meaningful game together. This was back in October, when the Lakers posted an 0-6 record in the preseason.
“We were getting killed in the preseason,” Vogel said in an expansive 30-minute phone interview. “And it was like, ‘Well, it’s preseason.’ But it’s still the early look at those guys.”
Sometimes, one look is all it takes.
That winless exhibition slate was a harbinger of the tumultuous season ahead and deep disappointment for a team that boasted a historic collection of talent: four members of the NBA’s 75th-anniversary team and, depending on how you count, as many as six Hall of Famers.
Despite that rich pedigree, they were constantly overmatched.
“Every game, you’re fighting against the current of healthier teams or teams that have more continuity,” Vogel said. “Or teams that are just better. Meaning your margin for error is very slim.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Vogel reflected at length on his third — and what many expect to be his last — season with the Lakers. Hours later, the Lakers were mathematically eliminated from the postseason when their 121-110 loss to the Phoenix Suns coincided with 10th-place San Antonio’s win over Denver. The Lakers fell to 31-48 with just three games remaining.
Vogel’s season-long stance that the Lakers would peak late in the year and then carry that momentum into the playoffs never materialized.
There will be no postseason for the Lakers.
For Vogel, armed with a roster of ill-fitting pieces that kept evolving due to COVID-19 and injuries, it was a season of constant evolution. Through Tuesday, 24 players took the court for the Lakers and Vogel had deployed 39 different starting lineups. The disruptions extended to Vogel himself, who spent six games in health and safety protocols in December.
The vision of a true big three, hatched in offseason meetings orchestrated by James and Davis, never took form. The two superstars have both been on the court with Westbrook for just 21 games.
Asked if he ever thought the Lakers had found the recipe for long-term success within all those various team identities, Vogel pointed at the injuries.
He said being full strength, “which never happened for more than three, four games at a time,” would have been the key.
“But even with that,” he said, “I felt like we were still a little bit imperfect.”
So Vogel kept adjusting. When the Lakers got healthy enough to start Davis at center, which Vogel said he “thought would be our identity,” Davis soon suffered his second lengthy absence due to injury of the season. The adjustments continued.
“Searching more than adjusting,” Vogel admitted.
Two nights earlier, after the Lakers lost to Denver and moved to the brink of elimination, the embattled coach made what was his final act of defiance.
Looking exhausted after the Nuggets pulled away from the Lakers late, Vogel said he was proud of his team, which had competed despite James’ absence. As he did so, he lightly smacked the table with frustration.
“It just sucks we can’t get over the hump and put a ‘W’ on the board when we really need it,” he said. “It sucks telling these guys after every game, ‘I’m proud of you, good effort. We lost.’”
It was a deeply authentic moment from a championship coach coming to terms with the reality that the incremental progress he was seeing within his battered team would not be enough to save the Lakers season or, most likely, his job.
When the Lakers season ends Sunday, among the questions the organization will need to answer is what to do with Vogel. While he is under contract through next season after signing a one-year extension last summer, all signs have pointed to the Lakers making a change.
In league circles, names of likely candidates to replace Vogel have begun to circulate in earnest.
Whether Vogel is replaced by Doc Rivers, Quin Snyder or anybody else, it speaks to the depth of the Lakers’ issues this season that the coach who led them to an NBA title less than two years ago can be seen as such an obvious casualty of this nightmare season.
Unsurprisingly, Vogel was unwilling to speculate on his future on Tuesday.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said.
Even if he is not ready to discuss his fate, he seems to understand it.
“It’s been a win-now job for each of the three years I’ve been here,” Vogel said.
He coached the Lakers to the 2020 championship in the Bubble, but after the Lakers were bounced in the first round of last year’s playoffs in another year derailed by injuries, they extended Vogel for just one more season, as The Athletic first reported last summer.
That tepid extension opened the door to speculation about Vogel’s future and that chatter only intensified after the Lakers started the season 10-11, slipping under .500 with a triple-overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings. Some in league circles believed that Vogel would have been fired if the Lakers did not win their next game, at home against Detroit on Nov. 28, which they did — but only narrowly.
As The Athletic reported in January, Vogel was nearly fired after the Lakers suffered a 33-point loss in Denver, creating an uncomfortable and public dialogue about his future.
“It’s not easy to shut it out,” Vogel said. “It’s not fun to have those reports hanging over your head or seeing it everywhere you look, especially so early in the season (and) after what we’ve been able to accomplish here. But to me, that pressure of expectation has been here since the day I signed on.”
Throughout it all, Vogel leaned on the support of his wife, Jenifer, who he said has “a great, great feel for people,” but Vogel also did what he has done throughout his career, which started with him as a video coordinator with the Boston Celtics: He threw himself into film study.
“To me the therapy is in the work,” Vogel said. “The film always makes you feel better. Whether you won big or lost big, all the answers are there.”
Identifying the problems and getting his aging team to execute the solutions proved to be very different things for Vogel and his coaching staff.
In Vogel’s first two seasons, the Lakers ranked at the top of the league in defensive efficiency. Westbrook’s arrival made replicating that next to impossible, and Vogel spent the season choosing between two evils: an undersized offensive-minded lineup that prioritized spacing around the light shooting Westbrook, or a lineup with defense and size that limited the Lakers scoring potential.
“The nature of how our offensive pieces fit together didn’t allow us to play with a defensive size and positional size that I typically like to have to give us that type of defensive success,” Vogel said. “So there were a lot more smaller lineups to open up the floor because of how our offensive pieces fit. Trying to make the offense work compromised our defense directly.”
Vogel was also handed a roster of players who are not historically strong defenders — Carmelo Anthony, Westbrook, Wayne Ellington and Malik Monk — or no longer as effective as they were earlier in their careers — Trevor Ariza and Kent Bazemore.
When Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ vice president of basketball operations, was asked in the preseason whether the Lakers could maintain their staunch defensive presence after stalwarts like Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Danny Green had been swapped out over the previous two offseasons, Pelinka pointed to Vogel’s track record.
“The good news is we have seen this ‘Coach Vogel Effect’ defensively,” Pelinka said, “with last year’s group, with the group before, where his system and his discipline and his teaching and his focus on that side of the ball translated into success.”
But that success also required defensive talent, something these Lakers objectively lacked. Entering Tuesday, the Lakers had plummeted to 23rd in defensive rating.
“The habit building, there was a lot to make up with,” Vogel said. “Guys that did not have great defensive habits. You know what I mean? So you coach it on a daily basis and push them to be accountable. But there was just a lot to overcome with this year’s team.”
While Vogel would not pin any of the Lakers’ issues on Westbrook, it’s clear that trying to maximize the 33-year-old former Most Valuable Player’s potential was among his biggest challenges.
The Lakers executed the costly trade for Westbrook, in part, to provide a superstar cushion for the possibility of the aging James or the injury-prone Davis missing games.
“We did not win at a high rate with Russ and another star and the rest of our role players,” Vogel said. “Whether it was Russ and AD with Bron out or Russ and Bron with AD out, we just haven’t won in those situations.”
On several occasions, Vogel made the notable decision to bench Westbrook in the closing minutes of tight games, though he never went to the extreme of bringing him off the bench — a move favored by some in the organization.
“I thought it was in the best interest of the Lakers to give it the season to make it work,” Vogel said. “Try to hit a stretch where we’re all at full strength. And, you know, and keep holding out hope that, you know, he would play better for us down the stretch. He has.”
Vogel’s right. Even as the Lakers have skidded down the stretch, winning just four times in the 21 games since the All-Star break, Westbrook seemed to finally find his footing down the stretch run of the season, averaging 21.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.6 assists in the nine games before Tuesday.
“You just try to coach and challenge guys,” Vogel said, “which you always do for all your players to be at their best. But I think he has rewarded me sticking with him.”
When Westbrook was asked Sunday about the challenges Vogel and his staff have faced this season, the Los Angeles native said, “They’ve done things that they felt was best for our team and I’ll leave it at that.”
For Vogel, there are points of pride in this season.
That is why his frustration on Sunday was so palpable. Why he smacked the table.
When the last hope of a postseason appearance was finally extinguished two nights later, Vogel could only say he was “extremely disappointed.”
“We were eliminated tonight and I can say it’s not been due to a lack of effort,” Vogel told a room of reporters. “We have all put in the work. Our guys stayed fighting right until the end. … We brought integrity to the process. We just fell short through a disjointed season.”
Vogel’s tenure experienced the high of a championship and the historic low of losing with a team that was built with a single expectation: to contend for another one.
Coaching teams like that has stakes. And, very often, consequences.
“That sort of coaching, you know, a high-expectation team,” Vogel said, “we would all rather coach with that team than (one with) no expectations.”
Long before injuries sent the Lakers spiraling — first out of title contention, and then the playoff picture entirely — Frank Vogel recognized cracks in the foundation of the team that was built to bring an 18th title to Los Angeles.
He recognized it before even the first regular-season game.
“It did not look good,” Vogel told The Athletic on Tuesday.
He could have been referencing any of the blowout losses the Lakers endured, or any of the Lakers’ short-lived hodgepodge lineups. But in truth, Vogel’s concerns began before the blockbuster trio of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook even played a meaningful game together. This was back in October, when the Lakers posted an 0-6 record in the preseason.
“We were getting killed in the preseason,” Vogel said in an expansive 30-minute phone interview. “And it was like, ‘Well, it’s preseason.’ But it’s still the early look at those guys.”
Sometimes, one look is all it takes.
That winless exhibition slate was a harbinger of the tumultuous season ahead and deep disappointment for a team that boasted a historic collection of talent: four members of the NBA’s 75th-anniversary team and, depending on how you count, as many as six Hall of Famers.
Despite that rich pedigree, they were constantly overmatched.
“Every game, you’re fighting against the current of healthier teams or teams that have more continuity,” Vogel said. “Or teams that are just better. Meaning your margin for error is very slim.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Vogel reflected at length on his third — and what many expect to be his last — season with the Lakers. Hours later, the Lakers were mathematically eliminated from the postseason when their 121-110 loss to the Phoenix Suns coincided with 10th-place San Antonio’s win over Denver. The Lakers fell to 31-48 with just three games remaining.
Vogel’s season-long stance that the Lakers would peak late in the year and then carry that momentum into the playoffs never materialized.
There will be no postseason for the Lakers.
For Vogel, armed with a roster of ill-fitting pieces that kept evolving due to COVID-19 and injuries, it was a season of constant evolution. Through Tuesday, 24 players took the court for the Lakers and Vogel had deployed 39 different starting lineups. The disruptions extended to Vogel himself, who spent six games in health and safety protocols in December.
The vision of a true big three, hatched in offseason meetings orchestrated by James and Davis, never took form. The two superstars have both been on the court with Westbrook for just 21 games.
Asked if he ever thought the Lakers had found the recipe for long-term success within all those various team identities, Vogel pointed at the injuries.
He said being full strength, “which never happened for more than three, four games at a time,” would have been the key.
“But even with that,” he said, “I felt like we were still a little bit imperfect.”
So Vogel kept adjusting. When the Lakers got healthy enough to start Davis at center, which Vogel said he “thought would be our identity,” Davis soon suffered his second lengthy absence due to injury of the season. The adjustments continued.
“Searching more than adjusting,” Vogel admitted.
Two nights earlier, after the Lakers lost to Denver and moved to the brink of elimination, the embattled coach made what was his final act of defiance.
Looking exhausted after the Nuggets pulled away from the Lakers late, Vogel said he was proud of his team, which had competed despite James’ absence. As he did so, he lightly smacked the table with frustration.
“It just sucks we can’t get over the hump and put a ‘W’ on the board when we really need it,” he said. “It sucks telling these guys after every game, ‘I’m proud of you, good effort. We lost.’”
It was a deeply authentic moment from a championship coach coming to terms with the reality that the incremental progress he was seeing within his battered team would not be enough to save the Lakers season or, most likely, his job.
When the Lakers season ends Sunday, among the questions the organization will need to answer is what to do with Vogel. While he is under contract through next season after signing a one-year extension last summer, all signs have pointed to the Lakers making a change.
In league circles, names of likely candidates to replace Vogel have begun to circulate in earnest.
Whether Vogel is replaced by Doc Rivers, Quin Snyder or anybody else, it speaks to the depth of the Lakers’ issues this season that the coach who led them to an NBA title less than two years ago can be seen as such an obvious casualty of this nightmare season.
Unsurprisingly, Vogel was unwilling to speculate on his future on Tuesday.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said.
Even if he is not ready to discuss his fate, he seems to understand it.
“It’s been a win-now job for each of the three years I’ve been here,” Vogel said.
He coached the Lakers to the 2020 championship in the Bubble, but after the Lakers were bounced in the first round of last year’s playoffs in another year derailed by injuries, they extended Vogel for just one more season, as The Athletic first reported last summer.
That tepid extension opened the door to speculation about Vogel’s future and that chatter only intensified after the Lakers started the season 10-11, slipping under .500 with a triple-overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings. Some in league circles believed that Vogel would have been fired if the Lakers did not win their next game, at home against Detroit on Nov. 28, which they did — but only narrowly.
As The Athletic reported in January, Vogel was nearly fired after the Lakers suffered a 33-point loss in Denver, creating an uncomfortable and public dialogue about his future.
“It’s not easy to shut it out,” Vogel said. “It’s not fun to have those reports hanging over your head or seeing it everywhere you look, especially so early in the season (and) after what we’ve been able to accomplish here. But to me, that pressure of expectation has been here since the day I signed on.”
Throughout it all, Vogel leaned on the support of his wife, Jenifer, who he said has “a great, great feel for people,” but Vogel also did what he has done throughout his career, which started with him as a video coordinator with the Boston Celtics: He threw himself into film study.
“To me the therapy is in the work,” Vogel said. “The film always makes you feel better. Whether you won big or lost big, all the answers are there.”
Identifying the problems and getting his aging team to execute the solutions proved to be very different things for Vogel and his coaching staff.
In Vogel’s first two seasons, the Lakers ranked at the top of the league in defensive efficiency. Westbrook’s arrival made replicating that next to impossible, and Vogel spent the season choosing between two evils: an undersized offensive-minded lineup that prioritized spacing around the light shooting Westbrook, or a lineup with defense and size that limited the Lakers scoring potential.
“The nature of how our offensive pieces fit together didn’t allow us to play with a defensive size and positional size that I typically like to have to give us that type of defensive success,” Vogel said. “So there were a lot more smaller lineups to open up the floor because of how our offensive pieces fit. Trying to make the offense work compromised our defense directly.”
Vogel was also handed a roster of players who are not historically strong defenders — Carmelo Anthony, Westbrook, Wayne Ellington and Malik Monk — or no longer as effective as they were earlier in their careers — Trevor Ariza and Kent Bazemore.
When Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ vice president of basketball operations, was asked in the preseason whether the Lakers could maintain their staunch defensive presence after stalwarts like Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Danny Green had been swapped out over the previous two offseasons, Pelinka pointed to Vogel’s track record.
“The good news is we have seen this ‘Coach Vogel Effect’ defensively,” Pelinka said, “with last year’s group, with the group before, where his system and his discipline and his teaching and his focus on that side of the ball translated into success.”
But that success also required defensive talent, something these Lakers objectively lacked. Entering Tuesday, the Lakers had plummeted to 23rd in defensive rating.
“The habit building, there was a lot to make up with,” Vogel said. “Guys that did not have great defensive habits. You know what I mean? So you coach it on a daily basis and push them to be accountable. But there was just a lot to overcome with this year’s team.”
While Vogel would not pin any of the Lakers’ issues on Westbrook, it’s clear that trying to maximize the 33-year-old former Most Valuable Player’s potential was among his biggest challenges.
The Lakers executed the costly trade for Westbrook, in part, to provide a superstar cushion for the possibility of the aging James or the injury-prone Davis missing games.
“We did not win at a high rate with Russ and another star and the rest of our role players,” Vogel said. “Whether it was Russ and AD with Bron out or Russ and Bron with AD out, we just haven’t won in those situations.”
On several occasions, Vogel made the notable decision to bench Westbrook in the closing minutes of tight games, though he never went to the extreme of bringing him off the bench — a move favored by some in the organization.
“I thought it was in the best interest of the Lakers to give it the season to make it work,” Vogel said. “Try to hit a stretch where we’re all at full strength. And, you know, and keep holding out hope that, you know, he would play better for us down the stretch. He has.”
Vogel’s right. Even as the Lakers have skidded down the stretch, winning just four times in the 21 games since the All-Star break, Westbrook seemed to finally find his footing down the stretch run of the season, averaging 21.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.6 assists in the nine games before Tuesday.
“You just try to coach and challenge guys,” Vogel said, “which you always do for all your players to be at their best. But I think he has rewarded me sticking with him.”
When Westbrook was asked Sunday about the challenges Vogel and his staff have faced this season, the Los Angeles native said, “They’ve done things that they felt was best for our team and I’ll leave it at that.”
For Vogel, there are points of pride in this season.
That is why his frustration on Sunday was so palpable. Why he smacked the table.
When the last hope of a postseason appearance was finally extinguished two nights later, Vogel could only say he was “extremely disappointed.”
“We were eliminated tonight and I can say it’s not been due to a lack of effort,” Vogel told a room of reporters. “We have all put in the work. Our guys stayed fighting right until the end. … We brought integrity to the process. We just fell short through a disjointed season.”
Vogel’s tenure experienced the high of a championship and the historic low of losing with a team that was built with a single expectation: to contend for another one.
Coaching teams like that has stakes. And, very often, consequences.
“That sort of coaching, you know, a high-expectation team,” Vogel said, “we would all rather coach with that team than (one with) no expectations.”
This all but confirms Vogel was the one that leaked he was close to being fired to Oram and Amick.
DLF
aepps20
Supporter
- Feb 8, 2004
- 42,565
- 90,844
Team is trash from da top down. Should've signed Meyers Leonard in da off season but didn't. With that said, Davis is the reason this team sucks. We all knew dude was injury prone but he's Mr. Glass. When he's healthy this team is 
caliber but when he spends most of every season in da training room watching MSNBC what can you expect. Westbrook needs to pay his dues to da Police Benevolent Fund because he wasn't enforcing anything.
caliber but when he spends most of every season in da training room watching MSNBC what can you expect. Westbrook needs to pay his dues to da Police Benevolent Fund because he wasn't enforcing anything.
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,900
- 129,228
I'm mildly surprised everyone wants to wash their hands of Melo.
- Aug 6, 2012
- 57,881
- 61,629
Unless we become a top 5 defense next year, he can't help much. He could hardly move on defense.I'm mildly surprised everyone wants to wash their hands of Melo.
D_eezus
formerly zombifed nach0
- Feb 22, 2013
- 17,414
- 17,141
Bazemore stays????
darthska
Staff member
- Apr 30, 2004
- 47,019
- 31,691
- Sep 5, 2010
- 92,900
- 129,228
Agreed, but he was kind of entertaining to watch for a portion of the season. Too much reliance on him just exposes his lack of defense like you said.
- Aug 6, 2012
- 57,881
- 61,629
He can go. I just wouldn't be mad if he's back. He's like Jarred Dudley at this point.
- Jul 16, 2017
- 22,590
- 16,315
Exclusive: Lakers coach Frank Vogel opens up on losing season, ‘imperfect’ roster and what comes next after elimination
Long before injuries sent the Lakers spiraling — first out of title contention, and then the playoff picture entirely — Frank Vogel recognized cracks in the foundation of the team that was built to bring an 18th title to Los Angeles.
He recognized it before even the first regular-season game.
“It did not look good,” Vogel told The Athletic on Tuesday.
He could have been referencing any of the blowout losses the Lakers endured, or any of the Lakers’ short-lived hodgepodge lineups. But in truth, Vogel’s concerns began before the blockbuster trio of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook even played a meaningful game together. This was back in October, when the Lakers posted an 0-6 record in the preseason.
“We were getting killed in the preseason,” Vogel said in an expansive 30-minute phone interview. “And it was like, ‘Well, it’s preseason.’ But it’s still the early look at those guys.”
Sometimes, one look is all it takes.
That winless exhibition slate was a harbinger of the tumultuous season ahead and deep disappointment for a team that boasted a historic collection of talent: four members of the NBA’s 75th-anniversary team and, depending on how you count, as many as six Hall of Famers.
Despite that rich pedigree, they were constantly overmatched.
“Every game, you’re fighting against the current of healthier teams or teams that have more continuity,” Vogel said. “Or teams that are just better. Meaning your margin for error is very slim.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Vogel reflected at length on his third — and what many expect to be his last — season with the Lakers. Hours later, the Lakers were mathematically eliminated from the postseason when their 121-110 loss to the Phoenix Suns coincided with 10th-place San Antonio’s win over Denver. The Lakers fell to 31-48 with just three games remaining.
Vogel’s season-long stance that the Lakers would peak late in the year and then carry that momentum into the playoffs never materialized.
There will be no postseason for the Lakers.
For Vogel, armed with a roster of ill-fitting pieces that kept evolving due to COVID-19 and injuries, it was a season of constant evolution. Through Tuesday, 24 players took the court for the Lakers and Vogel had deployed 39 different starting lineups. The disruptions extended to Vogel himself, who spent six games in health and safety protocols in December.
The vision of a true big three, hatched in offseason meetings orchestrated by James and Davis, never took form. The two superstars have both been on the court with Westbrook for just 21 games.
Asked if he ever thought the Lakers had found the recipe for long-term success within all those various team identities, Vogel pointed at the injuries.
He said being full strength, “which never happened for more than three, four games at a time,” would have been the key.
“But even with that,” he said, “I felt like we were still a little bit imperfect.”
So Vogel kept adjusting. When the Lakers got healthy enough to start Davis at center, which Vogel said he “thought would be our identity,” Davis soon suffered his second lengthy absence due to injury of the season. The adjustments continued.
“Searching more than adjusting,” Vogel admitted.
Two nights earlier, after the Lakers lost to Denver and moved to the brink of elimination, the embattled coach made what was his final act of defiance.
Looking exhausted after the Nuggets pulled away from the Lakers late, Vogel said he was proud of his team, which had competed despite James’ absence. As he did so, he lightly smacked the table with frustration.
“It just sucks we can’t get over the hump and put a ‘W’ on the board when we really need it,” he said. “It sucks telling these guys after every game, ‘I’m proud of you, good effort. We lost.’”
It was a deeply authentic moment from a championship coach coming to terms with the reality that the incremental progress he was seeing within his battered team would not be enough to save the Lakers season or, most likely, his job.
When the Lakers season ends Sunday, among the questions the organization will need to answer is what to do with Vogel. While he is under contract through next season after signing a one-year extension last summer, all signs have pointed to the Lakers making a change.
In league circles, names of likely candidates to replace Vogel have begun to circulate in earnest.
Whether Vogel is replaced by Doc Rivers, Quin Snyder or anybody else, it speaks to the depth of the Lakers’ issues this season that the coach who led them to an NBA title less than two years ago can be seen as such an obvious casualty of this nightmare season.
Unsurprisingly, Vogel was unwilling to speculate on his future on Tuesday.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he said.
Even if he is not ready to discuss his fate, he seems to understand it.
“It’s been a win-now job for each of the three years I’ve been here,” Vogel said.
He coached the Lakers to the 2020 championship in the Bubble, but after the Lakers were bounced in the first round of last year’s playoffs in another year derailed by injuries, they extended Vogel for just one more season, as The Athletic first reported last summer.
That tepid extension opened the door to speculation about Vogel’s future and that chatter only intensified after the Lakers started the season 10-11, slipping under .500 with a triple-overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings. Some in league circles believed that Vogel would have been fired if the Lakers did not win their next game, at home against Detroit on Nov. 28, which they did — but only narrowly.
As The Athletic reported in January, Vogel was nearly fired after the Lakers suffered a 33-point loss in Denver, creating an uncomfortable and public dialogue about his future.
“It’s not easy to shut it out,” Vogel said. “It’s not fun to have those reports hanging over your head or seeing it everywhere you look, especially so early in the season (and) after what we’ve been able to accomplish here. But to me, that pressure of expectation has been here since the day I signed on.”
Throughout it all, Vogel leaned on the support of his wife, Jenifer, who he said has “a great, great feel for people,” but Vogel also did what he has done throughout his career, which started with him as a video coordinator with the Boston Celtics: He threw himself into film study.
“To me the therapy is in the work,” Vogel said. “The film always makes you feel better. Whether you won big or lost big, all the answers are there.”
Identifying the problems and getting his aging team to execute the solutions proved to be very different things for Vogel and his coaching staff.
In Vogel’s first two seasons, the Lakers ranked at the top of the league in defensive efficiency. Westbrook’s arrival made replicating that next to impossible, and Vogel spent the season choosing between two evils: an undersized offensive-minded lineup that prioritized spacing around the light shooting Westbrook, or a lineup with defense and size that limited the Lakers scoring potential.
“The nature of how our offensive pieces fit together didn’t allow us to play with a defensive size and positional size that I typically like to have to give us that type of defensive success,” Vogel said. “So there were a lot more smaller lineups to open up the floor because of how our offensive pieces fit. Trying to make the offense work compromised our defense directly.”
Vogel was also handed a roster of players who are not historically strong defenders — Carmelo Anthony, Westbrook, Wayne Ellington and Malik Monk — or no longer as effective as they were earlier in their careers — Trevor Ariza and Kent Bazemore.
When Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ vice president of basketball operations, was asked in the preseason whether the Lakers could maintain their staunch defensive presence after stalwarts like Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Danny Green had been swapped out over the previous two offseasons, Pelinka pointed to Vogel’s track record.
“The good news is we have seen this ‘Coach Vogel Effect’ defensively,” Pelinka said, “with last year’s group, with the group before, where his system and his discipline and his teaching and his focus on that side of the ball translated into success.”
But that success also required defensive talent, something these Lakers objectively lacked. Entering Tuesday, the Lakers had plummeted to 23rd in defensive rating.
“The habit building, there was a lot to make up with,” Vogel said. “Guys that did not have great defensive habits. You know what I mean? So you coach it on a daily basis and push them to be accountable. But there was just a lot to overcome with this year’s team.”
While Vogel would not pin any of the Lakers’ issues on Westbrook, it’s clear that trying to maximize the 33-year-old former Most Valuable Player’s potential was among his biggest challenges.
The Lakers executed the costly trade for Westbrook, in part, to provide a superstar cushion for the possibility of the aging James or the injury-prone Davis missing games.
“We did not win at a high rate with Russ and another star and the rest of our role players,” Vogel said. “Whether it was Russ and AD with Bron out or Russ and Bron with AD out, we just haven’t won in those situations.”
On several occasions, Vogel made the notable decision to bench Westbrook in the closing minutes of tight games, though he never went to the extreme of bringing him off the bench — a move favored by some in the organization.
“I thought it was in the best interest of the Lakers to give it the season to make it work,” Vogel said. “Try to hit a stretch where we’re all at full strength. And, you know, and keep holding out hope that, you know, he would play better for us down the stretch. He has.”
Vogel’s right. Even as the Lakers have skidded down the stretch, winning just four times in the 21 games since the All-Star break, Westbrook seemed to finally find his footing down the stretch run of the season, averaging 21.6 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.6 assists in the nine games before Tuesday.
“You just try to coach and challenge guys,” Vogel said, “which you always do for all your players to be at their best. But I think he has rewarded me sticking with him.”
When Westbrook was asked Sunday about the challenges Vogel and his staff have faced this season, the Los Angeles native said, “They’ve done things that they felt was best for our team and I’ll leave it at that.”
For Vogel, there are points of pride in this season.
That is why his frustration on Sunday was so palpable. Why he smacked the table.
When the last hope of a postseason appearance was finally extinguished two nights later, Vogel could only say he was “extremely disappointed.”
“We were eliminated tonight and I can say it’s not been due to a lack of effort,” Vogel told a room of reporters. “We have all put in the work. Our guys stayed fighting right until the end. … We brought integrity to the process. We just fell short through a disjointed season.”
Vogel’s tenure experienced the high of a championship and the historic low of losing with a team that was built with a single expectation: to contend for another one.
Coaching teams like that has stakes. And, very often, consequences.
“That sort of coaching, you know, a high-expectation team,” Vogel said, “we would all rather coach with that team than (one with) no expectations.”
This all but confirms Vogel was the one that leaked he was close to being fired to Oram and Amick.
The media sympathy he got after that all but shut the door on him being fired. Jeanie and management hate looking bad (bc they know they are bad) and this made them look like clowns so naturally they didn’t fire him to eliminate any noise of the report being true. Genius move by Vogel
Can’t wait for more dirt to come out. Derozen already said lakers seem unorganized. Kawhi laughed at our management.
Jeanie
Kurt
Linda
Rob
The four idiots.
- Feb 8, 2009
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of course
- Sep 5, 2010
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Pelinka gonna tell Jeanie a story about how Kobe loved the Buss family and get an extension for it.
- Jan 27, 2004
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darthska
Staff member
- Apr 30, 2004
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C
CP1708
, question: How much money could we save by not even having a coach next year and moving forward? Actually, no coaching staff at all. What's the payroll of our entire coaching staff?
Stupid coaches just get in the way and waste payroll. Imagine how good we'd be with just the guys and a trainer.
Actually, do they even need a trainer?
Pretty sure they know how to tie their shoes, amirite?
-foe
Stupid coaches just get in the way and waste payroll. Imagine how good we'd be with just the guys and a trainer.
Actually, do they even need a trainer?
Pretty sure they know how to tie their shoes, amirite?-foe
