With Dan Hurley rejecting the Los Angeles Lakers’ massive offer to become head coach of the team and choosing to remain at UConn, the franchise must now pivot in their search for their next head coach.
Many would assume the Lakers would simply turn back to earlier favorites such as JJ Redick and James Borrego, but that may not necessarily be the case. In fact, the Lakers and general manager Rob Pelinka may be unclear of which route to take.
According to Jovan Buha of The Athletic, the Lakers have no clear Plan B following Hurley turning down the job and he believes the team might reset and go through all coaching candidates once again:
“In talking to different people today, there has not been a clear Plan B for the Lakers from this situation. I thought that this was likely going to just be a five-day interlude and the Lakers would go back to the JJ Redick well and try to circle back and mend fences and just go back and make him the front runner or the favorite or whatever term you want to use again and that would be the likely outcome. But in having conversations with people in and outside of the organization today it has been a mixed bag in terms of what is the Plan B.
“I’ve heard things ranging from ‘JJ is still the front runner,’ ‘JJ is still the favorite’ to ‘JJ is in the mix,’ but there might be a little bit of a reset there in terms of the Lakers really reevaluating all the candidates again and sort of refreshing the candidate pool in terms of looking at everybody through a new lens. I’ve heard JJ is out and that JJ is not under consideration anymore. And I’ve heard that the Lakers are going to scrap the entire pool and start over.”
There are certainly a wide range of options for the Lakers in this coaching search. Of course the team could go back to the likes of Borrego or Redick, but there is no guarantee that either would still be interested after now knowing that they weren’t the franchise’s first option.
And if Pelinka and the rest of the Lakers brass isn’t enamored with anyone they’ve interviewed so far, there are many more qualified people the team could still interview. In any case, the franchise must kick things into high gear as the offseason will really get going soon.
Was Dan Hurley Lakers’ top candidate from the beginning
There have been conflicting reports about whether or not Dan Hurley was the Lakers’ top choice from the beginning of their search for a new head coach.
While ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski initially broke the news of the Lakers interest and claimed that he had actually been the franchise’s top choice from day one, The Athletic’s Shams Charania recently refuted that, saying that the franchise’s interest in the UConn coach only began around the time the news came out.
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