dockingsched wrote:crazyeights wrote:This isn't about Gentry. This is about the Lakers offering someone a job and them declining it to join the Clippers.
Nobody gives a **** about Gentry.
they offered him more money, what more is there to it than that?
That's the point. Do you think the Lakers just so happened to be a great franchise? It's been about money and management. They can't simply rest on their laurels. "We're the Lakers."
If you want to say well they can't spend money on an associate head coach, because they are still paying off Mike Brown...then okay, but wouldn't we all agree that that goes back to management hiring the wrong coach? Then they hire MDA without consulting Dwight Howard when it was pretty clear that this might be an issue, seeing that MDA doesn't use traditional big men--which just so happened to be our true advantage, seeing that Mitch spent years in a poker game to fetch Howard.
So it's either the Lakers are really either more excited about the prospect of 2014 free agency than retaining Dwight or they are being either stubborn or cheap not wanting to let go of MDA, or they are completely clueless as to the perception they are putting out there to the league. Their mismanaging of the Phil situation--which with a good PR staff should have quelled any notion that they were ever really going to hire him immediately--do we realize the Lakers on their OWN network had commentators they are paying, slapping each others backs thinking Phil's getting the band back together.
It's not as if they were railroaded here, they simply are clueless.
Mitch is a good GM, and I'm sure Jimmy will run a team that will be great someday...but you can't tell me nepotism isn't taking its toll here. Teams around the league are hiring the best of the best and we're stuck with the first son. People wanna talk Jeanie Buss, IMO she's no different. If the Lakers are so tight on cash that they can't hire a different coach to keep a top 5 player to be the face of their franchise, then IDK what they're doing, but they're not doing something right.
This is about the decline of empires. Scrub coaches like Gentry shouldn't choose the Clippers over the Lakers. But it's happening more and more. And maybe everyone's at fault here. Us fans are spoiled and over-demanding (for an example see how people are treating Dwight Howard after the dude came back and played from opening night...look at those interviews when he first got here, he was a freed soul, we pushed the guy away with bad vibes and shattered expectations). Kobe has been allowed to give the Lakers the feeling that you play with me and you're my bitch (this is why we have guys that people complain about being soft (Pau/Lamar) because no other players would want to put up with that (unless they're young and feel there's a lot to learn from him). We've gotten to the point where the next coach is still replacing Phil Jackson instead of Mike Brown. Jeanie keeping PJ in the fold only makes the situation seem more fragile.
IDK man, everything I'm seeing right now is just like our team, old and decaying. Can't wait for this next season to be over with and hope that whatever mirage they see in 2014 is actually an oasis.