The Los Angeles Lakers’ very public pursuit of UConn head coach Dan Hurley has now come to an end. Hurley turned down the Lakers’ six-year, $70 million deal to remain with the Huskies, and in the aftermath, some interesting comments made by Richard Jefferson last week about that head coaching position have gone viral.
“They get the luck of ‘people are always going to want to come here, we’re always going to get free agents, so we don’t have to be as organized as we should…’ You can win a championship and be fired the following year. You can go to the Conference Finals and be fired the next year. So what are they looking for? And if that’s what they’re looking for long term? Then good for them.”
I think it’s fair to say that the Lakers haven’t been a very well-run organization since the great Dr. Jerry Buss passed away. They were the model franchise under him but now there appears to be a fair bit of dysfunction behind the scenes.
Complacency has seeped in, in the sense that, the top brass has felt like it can afford to not put the best foot forward and get away with it because it’s the Lakers. For a head coach, that’s not an ideal situation to find themselves in.
When you also factor in all the coaching turnover over the last decade or so, the job becomes even less desirable. Since Phil Jackson left in 2011, the Lakers have had six different full-time head coaches in 13 seasons.
What happened to the last two was what Jefferson was referring to there. Frank Vogel won a championship with the Lakers in 2020 and was fired in 2022 while Darvin Ham led the team to the Western Conference Finals in 2023 and was fired in 2024.
Richard Jefferson Says The Lakers Have Egg All Over Their Faces After Being Rejected By Dan Hurley
After news broke about Hurley turning down the Lakers, Jefferson did not mince words when speaking on the topic, on NBA Today.
“(Adrian Wojnarowski) basically said the decision was more about he had more to accomplish,” Jefferson said. “So it was less about the Lakers and more about what he had to accomplish, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Lakers still do not have a coach and we are in the NBA Finals.
“They announced their priority search or who is going to be priority during Game 1 of the NBA Finals when the Boston Celtics are playing,” Jefferson continued. “Some might call that just coincidence (but) I’m Richard Petty, so I’m going to call it petty, but now you got egg all over your face.
“Because the Celtics are two wins away from winning a championship and you just got turned down from an East Coast guy saying that I don’t want to go do that, I have more in college that I have to accomplish,” Jefferson stated. “And now we don’t know who the Laker head coach is going to be, just a couple of weeks before the NBA Draft.”
It certainly isn’t a good look for the Lakers and now we wait and see who they might end up hiring for that job. Jefferson also added that he believes Hurley turning down this opportunity shows that there are plenty of issues inside the Lakers that need to be addressed.
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