Skip to main content

Frank Vogel to be fired as Lakers head coach, expected to be told as soon as Monday, per report


 


Frank Vogel has coached his final game for the Los Angeles Lakers, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. He is expected to be told as soon as Monday. The Lakers, winners of the 2020 NBA championship, entered the season as Western Conference favorites. They failed to live up to that mantle due to a combination of injuries, age, a poorly-built roster and mismanagement of that roster, and on Tuesday, they were officially eliminated from playoff contention. They closed the season with a 33-49 record. Now Vogel is paying the price for their failure and has been removed from his position as coach less than two years after leading the Lakers to the title.


When asked about the news that he would not be retained, Vogel fired back. "I haven't been told s--- and I'm going to enjoy tonight's game," Vogel told reporters. "We'll deal with tomorrow tomorrow."


In truth, the Lakers were hardly committed to Vogel even when they hired him. They had initially planned to hire Ty Lue, but when they offered him only a three-year deal and demanded control over his coaching staff, he declined the offer and the Lakers turned to Vogel. He accepted the shorter contract and it paid off for all parties involved. Yet even after Vogel won a championship, he still needed to wait until after the 2020-21 season to earn a contract extension. That extension reportedly added only a single year to his deal, contracting him for only a total of four despite Lue getting a five-year deal from the Clippers before ever coaching a game for them.


Vogel's strength as a coach has always been his defensive acumen. The Lakers won the 2020 championship based on their defense, and last season, they ranked No. 1 in the league despite injuries to both LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Not even Vogel could save this season's Lakers roster, though, as they fell to No. 21 in defense. Couple that decline with Vogel's often baffling rotation decisions and the Lakers have decided to move on from their embattled coach.


Vogel should now become one of the most pursued coaches on the market. In three NBA stops he has won a championship, reached the conference finals three times and won just under 53 percent of his regular-season games. Should he fail to earn another head-coaching job this offseason, he could either take a year off (as he did after being fired by the Orlando Magic in 2018) or pursue an assistant coaching position. Vogel was a rumored candidate for Lue's staff had Lue been hired by the Lakers in 2019.


The Lakers, meanwhile, will now search for their sixth full-time head coach since Phil Jackson retired in 2011. None of the others have been nearly as successful as Vogel was. Traditionally, teams almost never fire coaches so soon after a championship. But the Lakers are not a traditional organization. They demand excellence year in, year out. They've made it clear that any coach that can't live up to that standard will be out of a job. Now, they've moved on from the only coach aside from Jackson to lead them to a championship in the past three decades.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dennis Rodman Once Said He, Michael Jordan, And Scottie Pippen Could Lock Up LeBron James: "LeBron Is So Easy To Play. He’s So F**king Easy To Play. He Doesn’t Have Any Moves."

  If there is something that will never end it is the comparison between players from different eras. Even in that niche, most comparisons revolve around the legendary players from the Chicago Bulls. Yes, we are talking about the likes of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman. A perfect example of that was seen by fans back in a 2019 interview featuring Dennis Rodman. The Worm was asked about his thoughts on guarding none other than LeBron James. Rodman replied: (starts at 6:06) "You know who could lock up LeBron? Me, Mike, and Scottie could. F*ck yeah. I would have locked his a** up. LeBron is so easy to play. He’s so f*cking easy to play, he don’t have any moves. Only move he has is streak down the line. He ain’t got no moves. Where he going?? Where is he going that’s quick? That’ll be sh*t, you can stop that. Scottie Pippen would have shut his f*cking a** down quick before I get to him. His game is too simple, he’s just big. I’m 260 and 6’8” and 6’9”, that’s the onl...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Michael Jordan On LeBron James: "He's An Unbelievable Player, He's One Of The Best Players In The World... I'm A Fan Of His, I Love Watching Him Play..."

  Even before he made it to the NBA, LeBron James was already compared to the greatest player of all time, Michael Jordan. His Airness made a huge impact on the league, winning six championships in eight years, dominating rivals every night, and becoming one of the best two-way players in NBA history.  During his career, and even during his retirement, many players were compared to Jordan, but nobody could live up to the expectations. LeBron James was deemed 'The Chosen One' when he was a teenager, and comparisons between him and MJ never stopped coming.  They have mutual respect, and the biggest proof of that came during the 2022 All-Star Game, where MJ and Bron embraced each other in Cleveland. James would post a big pic of his first and most recent encounter with Jordan, paying respect to the man that inspired him.  Just like the Los Angeles Lakers superstar has always shown his admiration for James, Jordan has done the same before. Back in 2020, during a press co...
Post a Comment
Read more