Vogel is Lakers’ scapegoat
LOS ANGELES — Shame on the Lakers. Shame on them for turning a magical championship season into an unabated clown show. Shame on them for spending the last 15 months deconstructing their rebuilt credibility and allowing themselves to crumble back into the same old mess.
Remember in April 2019 when Johnson abruptly quit as the Lakers’ president, sending the organization spinning into weeks of confusion and embarrassment? Rob Pelinka was ridiculed, Kurt and Linda Rambis were ripped and the coaching seat was soon swept clean.
It’s all happening again. “I don’t feel like I’m under siege,” coach Frank Vogel said before a 111-104 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday.
He’s under siege. The ugliness starts with his situation. The Lakers are preparing to make him the scapegoat for their personnel mistakes. It’s just a matter of time. He could be fired this week, or next week, or sometime next month or this spring, but he almost surely will be fired for being unable to connect a passel of mismatched dots into a championship contender.
It’s not even remotely his fault, but what are Pelinka and Rambis going to do, fire themselves? To save their jobs, they will willingly sacrifice the 2020 championship coach as if he has suddenly forgotten how to coach. They will betray one of the league’s defensive geniuses, even though this team desperately needs to improve on defense. They will release a good guy to protect their bad ideas.
They’ve already embarrassed him by privately yakking about his situation so much that their thoughts have landed in the media. Now Rambis, who quietly has great influence over the basketball operation with wife Linda, is even further embarrassing Vogel by sitting in daily coach’s meetings.
“Everyone is working together to leave no stone unturned in terms of getting this thing going in the right direction,” Vogel said.
That’s the problem. Since they won a championship in 2020, they have turned over so many stones that the once hallowed ground beneath the Lakers’ sneakers is unrecognizable.
Think about this: Only three players on the current Lakers roster have continuously remained with the team since the 2020 title run — Lebron James, Anthony Davis and Talen Horton-tucker.
The list of players Pelinka
sent packing in the two years since the championship makes a Lakers fan wince: Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-pope, Alex Caruso, Danny Green, Montrezl Harrell, Markieff Morris and Wesley Matthews.
The list of supporting players currently on the roster mostly makes Lakers fans wince even more: Russell Westbrook, Malik Monk, Carmelo Anthony, Kent Bazemore, Wayne Ellington and Deandre Jordan.
“I feel good about what we’re doing with our team,” Vogel said before the game. “Don’t always feel good about the result, but I believe in what we can do this year.”
With the exception of the forever-young James, they have no consistent championship threat, and that includes Davis, who can’t stay healthy enough to be the necessary cornerstone.
They don’t have the goods to make a trade. They don’t have the big expiring contracts to make a big offseason move. The clown show could continue through the spring of 2023.
The words of Magic Johnson in Saturday’s infamous tweet ring true, with one exception.
“Lakers fans can accept being outplayed but we deserve more than a lack of effort and no sense of urgency,” Johnson tweeted. “Owner Jeanie Buss, you deserve better.”
No, by backing a front office that has bumbled through the last 15 months, Buss is getting what she deserves. Vogel is not. Usually when a coach is seemingly on the verge of being canned, fans chant for his firing. There were no such chants Wednesday night.
They simply booed and walked away early. Smart of them, shame on the Lakers.