Tyronn Lue is currently the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, but he very easily could have been coaching their rivals instead. Lue had taken himself out of the running to be the Los Angeles Lakers‘ head coach in 2019, and he was asked about that decision during an appearance on the Club Shay Shay podcast.
“I would have loved [to become their head coach],” Lue said. “I mean, it would have been a dream come true.”
Lue had spent the first three seasons of his playing career with the Lakers and won championships in 2000 and 2001 with the franchise. He has fond memories of that time and once claimed that the 2001 team was the best ever.
With that in mind, leading the Lakers to glory as the head coach would have been special for Lue, but there were multiple reasons why he decided he wouldn’t take the job.
“One, they offered me short years,” Lue stated. “They offered me three years, and I wanted to do five. I guess because they was trying to tie me to LeBron [James]. Two, the money was low… Well, I’m saying it wasn’t low like for me personally, the money, it was low for the head coach, and for what it meant to everybody else going forward.
“It’s kind of like the players’ association,” Lue continued. “If you take a bad deal, they’re going to give us all bad deals. And so, I just felt for me being a championship coach and being black, I thought it was up to me to make sure I set the standard. If I take a bad deal, then what’s everybody else going to get, you know?”
Lue had led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA title in 2016 and wanted to get the kind of deal that a championship-winning head coach commands. The Lakers reportedly offered him a three-year, $18 million deal, and neither the duration nor the money was to his liking.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lue also confirmed reports from back then about the Lakers not allowing him to choose his coaching staff.
“I couldn’t pick my coaching staff,” Lue said. “Well, they wouldn’t let me pick my coaching staff. So they was going to pick my coaching staff for me, and so I had to leave a lot of guys behind.”
Lue made it clear he had no issues with the people that the Lakers were thinking of hiring to be part of his staff, but he wanted to work with the assistants he had alongside him on the Cavaliers. They had won a championship together, and he wasn’t going to just forget about them when he got a new job.
“I just felt that that wasn’t something that I wanted to do,” Lue stated. “So those three things kind of nipped it in the bud. I mean it was no bad blood. It was just what it was.”
Lue became the lead assistant for Clippers head coach Doc Rivers after rejecting the Lakers. Rivers would then get fired in 2020, and Lue was chosen to replace him. He enjoyed a lot of success against the Lakers, winning his first 11 games against them. Lue hasn’t been able to win a title with the Clippers, though.
The Lakers, meanwhile, did win a title in 2020 with Frank Vogel as their head coach. They had turned to Vogel after Lue rejected them, and he wasn’t a bad hire. That said, he didn’t last long. Vogel was fired in 2022 and replaced by Darvin Ham, who wouldn’t be around for too long either.
Ham was let go in 2024, with JJ Redick coming in as his replacement. The Redick hire was a big risk, but the gamble has paid off so far. He led the Lakers to a 50-32 record in his first season, and it will be interesting to see how they fare next season.
