The Los Angeles Lakers are interested in having UConn head coach Dan Hurley as their new head honcho, and Magic Johnson is absolutely thrilled to hear that.
“I heard the great news that Lakers Owner Jeanie Buss and GM/VP of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka have had conversations with back-to-back NCAA champion and current UCONN Head Coach, Dan Hurley, about becoming the next Lakers Head Coach!”
“I’m so excited and thrilled! This would be a game changer for the Lakers organization, LeBron, AD, the rest of the Laker players, Laker Nation and the NBA! Coach Hurley can coach his butt off lol.”
Johnson later made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where one of the topics of conversation was the Lakers’ head coaching job. The 64-year-old made it clear he would want Hurley to get it over JJ Redick.
“I want the coach to be Hurley,” Johnson said. “If we can sign him, I think it works for both. It works for coach Hurley, who won back-to-back NCAA championships with Connecticut, so he has a championship background.
“He’s great with offense and defensive strategy,” Johnson continued. “I think the players would respect him and he’s tough. The Lakers got to have somebody who will hold them accountable, right? And also we got to play physical basketball. Denver will always beat us unless we become a much more physical team. So we gotta get more physical.”
(starts at 13:15 mark):
Johnson is far from the only one to hold Hurley in such high regard and there’s a good reason for that. The 51-year-old has done an incredible coaching job at UConn, leading them to back-to-back national championships in 2023 and 2024. Over those two seasons, the Huskies had a 68-11 record, as they dominated college basketball.
It seemed only like a matter of time before NBA teams looked at Hurley as someone who could be their head coach. The Lakers being that team was perhaps a bit surprising, especially with all the talk about Redick getting the job.
Dan Hurley And The Lakers Are Set To Meet Today
The question now is whether the Lakers will be able to convince Hurley to take the job and it appears we’ll learn the answer fairly quickly. On NBA Countdown, insider Adrian Wojnarowski revealed the two parties will be meeting on Friday and that we’ll find out whether Hurley will be the head coach sooner rather than later.
“Dan Hurley, I’m told, is on his way to meet with the Lakers tomorrow,” Wojnarowski said. “He’ll sit down with Rob Pelinka, their vice president and GM, and owner Jeanie Buss and they’ll start digging into what a Hurley-Laker partnership would look like.”
“Certainly the Lakers would love to get a deal with Dan Hurley wrapped up this weekend,” Wojnarowski continued. “I expect these talks will move quickly. There’s a lot of traction here between Hurley and the Lakers. But they certainly have more talking to do about whether there’s a fit here.”
Reporting on the Dan Hurley/Lakers talks for NBA Countdown with @malika_andrews pic.twitter.com/NwwK1Qaluq
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 7, 2024
Is Hurley the right man for the job? Well, the initial report stated that the Lakers believe he would greatly improve their young players: Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, and Max Christie. I think he could pull that off, but I am not sold on him being a great hire here.
We have seen so many great college coaches fail in the NBA at this point, with John Calipari and Rick Pitino being two names that come to mind immediately. Hurley also had a lot of his success with UConn, by implementing a motion offense and I am not too certain about how well that would work with someone like LeBron James.
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