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Adrian Wojnarowski
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Fizdale had been pursued for several lead assistant openings this off-season and will now join Frank Vogel’s staff with the Lakers. Fizdale was a longtime Miami Heat assistant who helped coach LeBron James under Erik Spoelstra.




What do you guys think?

Another klutch client and a Lebron favorite but the guy is a massive blowhard and Marc Gasol absolutely loathes him from their time in Memphis. Marc demanded a trade because of him. Not a good look unless he was consulted prior to the hiring.

Really? I did not know this. Wow. So this could finally put the nail in Marc's career as a Laker, huh? He already was getting dissed by Vogel, now you bring in an ex coach that dissed him. Dirty strategy, you think on the Lakers part?

Marc is gone and it didn't have anything to do with Fizdale.
There are numerous reports that JC Navarro is heavily recruiting him to Barcelona to play with Pau for one more year before the latter will retire.

Being on team Spain for the Olympics alongside Pau will only make Marc want that more..
He would've retired from the NBA regardless of the Fizdale hiring.

Yeah, I personally always though Fizdale was a jackass... He's like a younger, thinner Mike Brown... Pure yes-man...

And if I'm Vogel, I'm looking for other opportunities right now... Because the narrative from Klutch will be "Fizdale for HC" very shortly... If the team loses a key game, despite the fact that AD and LeBron are going to take the reg season off, there will inevitably be a push for Fizdale to take over.

Did we even need another Coach on the staff?

Damn I can't stand Fizdale. I just remember him always complaining on the Heat bench. You don't want that out of your assistant coaches. A lot of people grew on me when they went to broadcasting/analysts, but definitely not Fizdale. Players usually like him, so at least there's that.

Kilroy wrote:Yeah, I personally always though Fizdale was a jackass... He's like a younger, thinner Mike Brown... Pure yes-man...

And if I'm Vogel, I'm looking for other opportunities right now... Because the narrative from Klutch will be "Fizdale for HC" very shortly... If the team loses a key game, despite the fact that AD and LeBron are going to take the reg season off, there will inevitably be a push for Fizdale to take over.

Did we even need another Coach on the staff?

I wouldn't worry about that. Kidd replacing Vogel never became an issue. And Kidd might poach some of the Laker staff so definitely need replacements. Not a fan of Fizdale though

heezyo2o wrote:

Kilroy wrote:Yeah, I personally always though Fizdale was a jackass... He's like a younger, thinner Mike Brown... Pure yes-man...

And if I'm Vogel, I'm looking for other opportunities right now... Because the narrative from Klutch will be "Fizdale for HC" very shortly... If the team loses a key game, despite the fact that AD and LeBron are going to take the reg season off, there will inevitably be a push for Fizdale to take over.

Did we even need another Coach on the staff?

I wouldn't worry about that. Kidd replacing Vogel never became an issue. And Kidd might poach some of the Laker staff so definitely need replacements. Not a fan of Fizdale though

Kidd wasn't a Klutch Klient and LeBron's boy.

I can definitely see the tree being shaken up.

I think as much as 70% of the roster will be new beginning next season.
Drummond/Gasol/Harrell/Schroder/Morris/Matthews/McLemore/Antetokunmpo will not be back. I can see at least one of Kuzma and KCP being traded.

If we start slow, it will probably be because of this. But Vogel will still be fired.

No issue with this. Fizdale as an assistant is not an issue. He’s actually very good as an assistant coach, but when you put him as head coach he’s just not very good.

Do we know if he can draw up some offensive sets?

ROballer wrote:I can definitely see the tree being shaken up.

I think as much as 70% of the roster will be new beginning next season.
Drummond/Gasol/Harrell/Schroder/Morris/Matthews/McLemore/Antetokunmpo will not be back. I can see at least one of Kuzma and KCP being traded.

If we start slow, it will probably be because of this. But Vogel will still be fired.

I just text my buddy this same info. All those guys maybe outro for sure and the Lakers do not have a lot of cash to play with. IF and this is a bug IF Lebron, AD, KCP are the last players held over from this season.. Meaning, Alfonso is not kept, Kyle gets traded, Marc walks away to play with his brother ( i do not know if that money falls off the books or the Lakers still pay... The Lakers will be at about 97.2 on the books. I am not including what the Lakers would get back for any trade involving Kyle so, that number could be higher.

So what is there left to spend? MLE? Vet Min? I am not sure.. This will be an interesting month tp say the least

He was a great assistant during his Heat days and was one of the main reasons of the Heat being so good defensively. That being said, that overlap with Vogel is either gonna make us the best defensive team in decades or just redundancy and me questioning why we didn't hire an offensive coach.

Lakers ranked 24th in the league in ORTG, most would say, well they missed AD and Lebron for a chunk of games so... but about 12 other teams do not have dynamic scorers too and this team just falls apart when Lebron is sitting on the bench and it was very obvious that this team badly lacked effective offensive sets that help them get better scoring opportunities.
I don't know Fizdale well, it was widely believed that he was a great assistant and yet Miami didn't exactly fall apart when he left.
So I did a very limited research on how he did as a HC.
Memphis before he got there ranked 19th underJoerger, when David was there, they also ranked 19th, then he lasted 19 games before he got fired.
in NY, Hornacek's final year, Knicks ranked 20th in ORTG, Fizdale comes in the next year and the Knicks ranked LAST=30TH with a paltry 104.6 per.
The following year, he again just lasted 22 games.
Yes, I am aware you have to put everything in context, who were the main players, were they ravaged by injuries, etc?
I just hope Pelinka have actually watched the game tapes when Fizdale actually coached these games.
I heard before that when Lebron signed with the Lakers, Luke Walton sought advice from Lebron's former coaches like Mike Brown, Spoelstra, including Fizdale and David's main answer was "to give the ball to Lebron and tell his teammates to get out of his way".
Rob seems to be a very smart guy who is detailed with his approach and I just pray that he is having numerous meetings right now with the coaching staff so they can be held accountable in creating better offensive sets.

We have been a massive failure at the 5 this whole season. Fix that, and we make any coach look good. Even fizdale

LAKESHOW wrote:We have been a massive failure at the 5 this whole season. Fix that, and we make any coach look good. Even fizdale

This.

Fizdale is a popular assistant with the players and seems to be good at developing talent (players' words, not mine). He might bring out more out of THT and Alex.

He's not a "system coach" which might be why he was so bad at being a head coach. There are old articles that shine some light on this (ex: https://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/the-901/The-901-The-David-Fizdale-File-Memphis-best-kept-park-secret-and-more-380956661.html/)

IgorK wrote:Fizdale is a popular assistant with the players and seems to be good at developing talent (players' words, not mine). He might bring out more out of THT and Alex.

He's not a "system coach" which might be why he was so bad at being a head coach. There are old articles that shine some light on this (ex: https://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/the-901/The-901-The-David-Fizdale-File-Memphis-best-kept-park-secret-and-more-380956661.html/)

It seems like a lot of effort for THT, but he's the only player this makes sense for...

Alex is 27... He's everything he's ever going to be at this point, and may have passed his peak.

If they brought him in for player development, it would seem they intend on investing heavily in THT and trying to cultivate him into a star. I'm on board with that, but I'm also concerned about the short term goal of getting to the finals. Hopefully, if this is the intention, it's an indication that they believe THT can already contribute at a championship role-player level.

Kilroy wrote:

IgorK wrote:Fizdale is a popular assistant with the players and seems to be good at developing talent (players' words, not mine). He might bring out more out of THT and Alex.

He's not a "system coach" which might be why he was so bad at being a head coach. There are old articles that shine some light on this (ex: https://archive.commercialappeal.com/news/the-901/The-901-The-David-Fizdale-File-Memphis-best-kept-park-secret-and-more-380956661.html/)

It seems like a lot of effort for THT, but he's the only player this makes sense for...

Alex is 27... He's everything he's ever going to be at this point, and may have passed his peak.

If they brought him in for player development, it would seem they intend on investing heavily in THT and trying to cultivate him into a star. I'm on board with that, but I'm also concerned about the short term goal of getting to the finals. Hopefully, if this is the intention, it's an indication that they believe THT can already contribute at a championship role-player level.

It's possible that Fiz is just a really good glue guy (again, players' coach) and would be helpful in integrating whatever new players we are surely going to bring in. Aside from health (the #1 reason our 2021 season ended early IMO) I think chemistry was the other significant issue. A lot of new additions who just didn't gel well with our returning players (Trezz, Matthews, and Schroder specifically)

WTF is that title lmao