slifersd wrote:Byron Scott is a jackass, I really don't think anyone can look at what he did the two years and come to a different conclusion. But the root cause of this team's problems has to start from the top. Jim, the head honcho of our basketball operations has been a catastrophe since he took over control. He just seems clueless as to what it would take to make his team good, and that is more concerning to me than 100 Byron Scott hirings. A company cannot do well without a competent CEO, and that is exactly what we do not have right now.
As far as Mitch is concerned, he has his problems as well. The whole LMA recruiting meeting crap was squarely on the front office. They were trying to sign a player and they did not even know how to talk to the guy. To some degree, I do wonder if the inept front office is a result of Mitch not doing his job right, or Jim putting too many of his drinking buddies in the office and took away Mitch's trusted supports. Either way, the FO has been very mediocre at best.
To me, though, the team needs to have a serious self examination and figure out why so many of the decisions they made have turned out so badly. We cannot learn from our mistakes unless we understand why we made those mistakes to begin with. Take this draft, for example, why was Russell picked over Okafor and Porzingis? Was it an issue where our scouting just messed up their evaluation? Was it an issue with our strategy (need vs. BPA)? Or was presumption of us being able to land LMA or Monroe? Whatever the problem is, we need to rectify it and make sure we don't repeat it. I am by no means saying Russell will definitely turn out to be a bust, but the decision certainly looks shaky right now.
I don't absolve Mitch entirely, and I certainly don't absolve Byron at all. But I believe it all starts at the top. You can call them a front office team, and in many respects they act as a team (and present themselves as a team), but who's the owner? That has an impact on the 'team' dynamics. Mitch is also very much a Laker family member, who will never publicly criticize a Buss family member, nor do I believe would he do anything internally to challenge the leadership structure (I don't think he's they type of guy who wants to be the #1 at any cost.)
But I believe if Jim handed the entire GM role and all basketball decisions to Mitch, things would have gone differently. If Mitch was the architect of the entire Laker plan from top to bottom, not only this season but where do we want to be next year or 5 years from now? And how do we get there, how do we manage the process? Maybe they'd still be struggling now, but I believe there would be a better plan in place, better implemented.
If things are dysfunctional at the very top, it doesn't matter what the soldiers and commanders do, it's going to be really, really difficult (and frankly require a lot of luck) to succeed. More likely you get a bunch of confusion with different pieces going in different directions, which is exactly what seems to be happening. The excuse is that it's Kobe's last year and Lakers suck anyway so it doesn't matter, so let him jack up shots, hey that's what the fans want to see. My answer is well, if the Lakers were actually better run and had a plan in place, it would matter that Kobe jacks up at 30% success rate.
Even if you call Jim semi-competent and semi-capable of his job, he's going to flat out lose to the rest of the competition which is not standing around feeling bad for the Lakers.
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