Lakers coach Frank Vogel likely needs a surprise playoff run to save his job

It has been less than 18 months since Frank Vogel won his first championship as an NBA head coach. He led the Los Angeles Lakers through one of the most tumultuous seasons in their history, deftly crafting a defensive juggernaut around LeBron James and Anthony Davis while overcoming both the death of Kobe Bryant and the conditions of the widely unpopular Orlando bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, he looked like one of the very best coaches in all of basketball.

Oh, how things have changed. Blaming Vogel for everything that has gone wrong for the Lakers would be grossly unfair, but as they march towards an early ending for this disastrous season, he is primed to serve as the fall-guy. Rumors about his job security have swirled for months, and according to The Athletic's Sam Amick and Bill Oram, he likely needs "a stunning playoff run" in order to maintain his job. CBS Sports' Bill Reiter confirmed that report.

Such a run seems overwhelmingly unlikely. The Lakers, right now, are just trying to hold off the New Orleans Pelicans for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference. Assuming they don't jump up to No. 8—unlikely as they trail the Clippers by 4.5 games—they will not only have to win two games just to reach the postseason, but they'd have to face the top-seeded Phoenix Suns in the first round once they get there. Unless Chris Paul's injury is more severe than it currently looks, the Lakers would be significant underdogs in that matchup.

Should they lose in that series or before, Vogel would likely be out of a job, ending one of the more bizarre coaching tenures in recent NBA memory. Vogel was hired only after the Lakers missed on Monty Williams and Ty Lue. He made the most of his opportunity and literally won a championship, but the front office's skepticism in his merits never seems to have wavered.

He is now being positioned to take the blame for their failures in putting a suitable roster on the floor for him. Vogel hasn't done a perfect job this season, but aside from Lue in Cleveland, no championship-winning coach has been fired by the team they led to the promised land this century. Dumping Vogel would be a drastic step, but with few other avenues toward improvement, it's one the Lakers have little choice but to make when this season comes to an end.

Comments

From Deep: At long last, Nikola Jokic's Nuggets can envision getting to the top of the mountain

Jamal Murray tore his ACL on April 12, 2021. Leading up to that night, he'd been playing at an All-NBA level for two months: In a 25-game stretch, Murray averaged 24.1 points on .509/.459/.935 shooting splits, 4.2 rebounds and 5.2 assists. He was even more efficient than he was in the bubble playoffs, and his defense had improved, too. Murray only got to play with Aaron Gordon, the Denver Nuggets' big trade-deadline addition, for five games. They won them all except the one in which Murray got injured. In 110 minutes, their new starting five scored slightly more efficiently than any iteration of the Kevin Durant-era death lineup in Golden State and defended like a top-five team. Two Nikola Jokic MVP awards later, Murray is back. So is Michael Porter Jr., who signed a five-year extension about a year ago and needed back surgery nine games into the 2020-21 season. The Nuggets remember how easily everything slid into place with Gordon in the mix. Newcomer Kentavious Caldwell-Pop...

LeBron James says he has 'no relationship' with Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

It's not a matter of if LeBron James passes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the No. 1 spot on the NBA's all-time scoring list, it's when. James sits just 1,326 points away from passing the Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Lakers legend, a milestone that should happen at some point this season given James is still performing at peak levels and is coming off a year in which he averaged over 30 points a night. If he averages around the same amount of points as he did a season ago for the Lakers, James could break the record somewhere in the middle of the season, assuming he stays healthy. It's a highly anticipated moment heading into the season, but in regards to LeBron's thoughts about and his relationship with Abdul-Jabbar, he didn't have much to say on the matter. Following the Lakers first preseason game Monday night, a reporter asked James what his thoughts were on the Lakers legend and if the two had any relationship, to which LeBron gave a very short answer. "No...

Klay Thompson to sit out Warriors preseason games in Japan as Kerr says he needs more time to ramp-up

Klay Thompson may have returned healthy to the Golden State Warriors last season, but the scars from his two missed seasons are still quite visible. The Warriors played their first of two preseason games against the Washington Wizards on Friday and will play another on Sunday, but Warriors coach Steve Kerr said that Thompson will not be playing at all during the trip to Japan. "Just feel more comfortable giving him a little more of a ramp up," Kerr said before Friday's victory over Washington. "He's just not quite ready to play at this point just based on where, you know, we're so early in camp. We just want to be safe and make sure he gets a good ramp-up before he plays in games." Typically, so little time to ramp up wouldn't be a problem for a veteran in a preseason context. The games tend to be so low-impact and demand so few minutes out of a team's best players that they can safely jog through them. Stephen Curry and Draymond Green played 1...

Crossover World

Search This Blog