How would you get this team back on track?

If it were me, I'd fire the coach. I'd bring back Bernie as interim head coach. Then I'd go out and hire someone better than MDA in the offseason. Sloan or McMillan might fit that bill just fine.

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:

LakerFan1235 wrote:No, mitch isn't the problem. On paper this team looked great, and it just comes down to execution. Mitch's job is to get you the team that sounds like it would work best.

On paper Kobe/Nash/Howard/Pau looked great. The bench always looked like s*** and we all wanted to look past it. And seeing as how none of those guys except maybe Kobe have performed that well, you need depth to survive in this league. Mitch hasn't done a good job of addressing depth in years. That's on him

you gonna be kidding me if you think this is on Mitch..LMAO.

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:

LakerFan1235 wrote:No, mitch isn't the problem. On paper this team looked great, and it just comes down to execution. Mitch's job is to get you the team that sounds like it would work best.

On paper Kobe/Nash/Howard/Pau looked great. The bench always looked like s*** and we all wanted to look past it. And seeing as how none of those guys except maybe Kobe have performed that well, you need depth to survive in this league. Mitch hasn't done a good job of addressing depth in years. That's on him

It's on Buss and Stern. Those two have sabotaged the Lakers in recent years.

LOL wrote:1. fire pringles
2. hire phil

Pipe dream, unfortunately.

3. trade pau, sacre, morris

For a bag of p'nuttles?

I'd say Jimmy is more likely to fall in love with big name players than Mitch. Getting Dwight was ok, since Bynum fell apart. The problem is that Dwight isn't a franchise player, so paying him like he is overinflates the payroll. Getting Nash for 10mil a year was a mistake. A younger stud would have been the answer.

Kobe doesn't need two superstars next to him to win. He needs young athletic studs who can get their own shots, and defend so he doesn't have to defend the best player on the other team. I think Mitch knows this, but amateur Jimmy goes for the big names. And as a result we have the best team on paper, and one of the worst teams on the court.

You guys do realize MDA signed a multi year contract, just like Brown? He'll be owed money for multiple years if he gets fired, too.

The whole roster needs to be reshaped .... we need to get a lot younger and more athletic and then hire a decent coach ...

I'll probably keep 3-4 players of the current roster , the rest is a mix of out of prime/D League material players

Armani wrote:You guys do realize MDA signed a multi year contract, just like Brown? He'll be owed money for multiple years if he gets fired, too.

There has to be a buy out / early termination clause!!!!! Jimmy is not that dumb to get burned twice!!!!

This team is just old. Just face facts. A little tweak isn't going to make a difference. The Kobe era is over. At least in terms of winning a championship and being a dominant team with him as "the man". As far i'm concerned, everyone is expendable except Dwight. You build around him. He is the base. No, i'm not saying he is the leader of a championship team but he certainly is the right start. If you get a great pg to compliment him, we have the two superstar pieces to build around and hopefully compete for a ring.

Get rid of Sacre/Morris/Ebanks/Duhon/Blake/MWP/Pau/Meeks/Jamison

1.) Get a damn bench

2.) Get a young SF that can shoot and defend

3.) Get a damn bench

4.) Rewind NateRob going off on us again again to show that for the same price we chose Darius Morris.

5.) Get a damn bench

6.) Get two way players instead of one trick ponies.

GET A FRICKIN' BENCH so Kobe doesn't have to play 48 minutes a night.

Its quite simple......
1. Fire MDA, bring B-Shaw....i dont care if they pay 3 coaches, they pay Pau 19mil for what
2. Sing Delonte West and reduce Nash minutes
3. Trade Pau and bring great SF and some bench player, like Thorton who can shoot and he is dangerous for opp team
4. Start playing defense with new coach and really practice it
5. If you play defense offense will come
6. Play defense
7. Play defense
8 Play defense

Lakerjones wrote:If it were me, I'd fire the coach. I'd bring back Bernie as interim head coach. Then I'd go out and hire someone better than MDA in the offseason. Sloan or McMillan might fit that bill just fine.

Here's what I wrote in another thread ....

I know Lakers management wouldn't do this but I would seriously fire MDA, allow Bickerstaff to finish out the season and get rid of contracts that are weighing the team down. There are teams that could use Gasol, Jamison ... anyone on the roster except for Kobe, Nash and Dwight. I know that by doing this the Lakers would be conceding the season but if Kobe is frustrated, I can just imagine how much Dwight is frustrated ... and D12 is the future of this franchise. The Lakers need to do all they can to keep D12.

MDA was a bad hire and the Lakers should just cut their losses. Live and learn that maybe next time management should do this in the off season. I still think either Phil or Sloan would have this team performing much better than MDA. The team would've defended and the offense would be more balanced instead of relying on jumpshots.

Doc Brown wrote:Get rid of Sacre/Morris/Ebanks/Duhon/Blake/MWP/Pau/Meeks/Jamison

1.) Get a damn bench

2.) Get a young SF that can shoot and defend

3.) Get a damn bench

4.) Rewind NateRob going off on us again again to show that for the same price we chose Darius Morris.

5.) Get a damn bench

6.) Get two way players instead of one trick ponies.

GET A FRICKIN' BENCH so Kobe doesn't have to play 48 minutes a night.

Hey Doc, what do you think about the Lakers getting a bench? I didn't see that in your recommendations.

Lets Go Lakers wrote:This team is just old. Just face facts. A little tweak isn't going to make a difference. The Kobe era is over. At least in terms of winning a championship and being a dominant team with him as "the man". As far i'm concerned, everyone is expendable except Dwight. You build around him. He is the base. No, i'm not saying he is the leader of a championship team but he certainly is the right start. If you get a great pg to compliment him, we have the two superstar pieces to build around and hopefully compete for a ring.

I don't think the Kobe era is over because he was highly efficient to start the season. I think MDA has just worn him out by having Kobe play too many minutes and guard PGs ...

Kobe looks worn out. The last several games he has had no lift on his jumpshots. Kobe is not the problem but MDA with his short rotations and ridiculous square peg in round hole offense is the real problem. MDA's offense is not putting Kobe in a good position to get easy buckets. I think that Kobe said that and Woj mentioned it in his recent article. Kobe said:

"We need to go back to basics," Bryant said. "We need to put guys in positions to do what they do best. We need to strip it down. Steve is best in pick-and-roll. Pau is best in the post. I'm best from the free-throw line extended down. Let's go back to basics."

Gasol, Jamison, Duhon out.. Young athletic defenders in.. Play inside out so Dwight starts putting up franchise player numbers again & starts getting franchise player respect from the refs. Who knows if that's enough to fix things, but it's clearly the direction we need to go in. Kobe, Nash, & Ron are old & slow too. But you just don't trade Kobe, & trading Nash after he came here to stay close to his kids & we brought in a coach just for him seems like a bad idea. Ron, I wouldn't be heartbroken if we traded him but he still plays with heart & gives us a good defensive effort, even if he has lost a step or 3.

The problem with this team is at the top and on the sidelines. I don't blame Mitch. The talent is here. We aren't athletic, but we do have talent. No one would argue that other coaches in the league couldn't get a lot more out of this roster.

We won with Bernie. No we weren't playing powerhouses but we could beat the Toronto's of the league with Bernie mainly because of what Kobe said at the time - that Bernie gets out of the way and let's them play. I am not sure what MDA's strategy is out there. It is beyond frustrating watching this team look so lost out there.

Unfortunately, unless Dwight forces their hands I don't see them getting rid of MDA. Based on that, we need to use Pau to get younger, more athletic guys. It's the only real strategy I see right now.

Remember when we wanted Sloan and this board insisted he would fall asleep during the game. These same people were okay with the Dantoni hire.

thisbjgz wrote:

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:

LakerFan1235 wrote:No, mitch isn't the problem. On paper this team looked great, and it just comes down to execution. Mitch's job is to get you the team that sounds like it would work best.

On paper Kobe/Nash/Howard/Pau looked great. The bench always looked like s*** and we all wanted to look past it. And seeing as how none of those guys except maybe Kobe have performed that well, you need depth to survive in this league. Mitch hasn't done a good job of addressing depth in years. That's on him

you gonna be kidding me if you think this is on Mitch..LMAO.

Totally agree. You are always going to have to sacrifice something. Build a super team and you sacrifice on depth. Build from the ground up and you sacrifice championships. Build a team with depth and you sacrifice on stars.

The problem with this team isn't the bench, per se. Sure, our bench isn't great, but it wasn't supposed to be great. What was supposed to be great is our starting lineup. And it isn't.

One can only blame him for not having depth on this team, if you're going to also blame him for paying all of our stars what they're being paid because that's the roadblock to having depth.

Hire MacMillan right now to be a defensive coach, tell MDA his leash is short and work with Nate. Try and get someone like Kyle Lowry or Hinrich or Landry Fields and then a decent back-up center and then let the season roll.

I'd keep Pau for now and look at the Off-Season if things go bad. Maybe tell Pau he is on a short leash too.

Big Mamma Jamma wrote:

Lakerjones wrote:If it were me, I'd fire the coach. I'd bring back Bernie as interim head coach. Then I'd go out and hire someone better than MDA in the offseason. Sloan or McMillan might fit that bill just fine.

Here's what I wrote in another thread ....

I know Lakers management wouldn't do this but I would seriously fire MDA, allow Bickerstaff to finish out the season and get rid of contracts that are weighing the team down. There are teams that could use Gasol, Jamison ... anyone on the roster except for Kobe, Nash and Dwight. I know that by doing this the Lakers would be conceding the season but if Kobe is frustrated, I can just imagine how much Dwight is frustrated ... and D12 is the future of this franchise. The Lakers need to do all they can to keep D12.

MDA was a bad hire and the Lakers should just cut their losses. Live and learn that maybe next time management should do this in the off season. I still think either Phil or Sloan would have this team performing much better than MDA. The team would've defended and the offense would be more balanced instead of relying on jumpshots.

^^ I agree 100%.

1. Trade Gasol for pieces that work hard and fit well in the system. There's young wings all over the place in this league and Gasol is good for at least one or two of them. Contact Sacremento, Phoenix, Detroit, and Charlotte. Teams that suck and that have a nice group of young talent. Teams that need a 19 million dollar expiring contract in a season and need a talented 7 foot champion player who can help mentor their group.

2. Make Howard the offense focus. With Gasol being a pansy, that makes it a little more difficult, but once he's gone there's no more debate about who gets the ball down low.

3. Make the inside game more of the focus. Nash is showing his age a bit lately and we need to rely on the inside game to make this work.

4. Stop having Kobe defend the team's best perimeter players for the entire game. In stretches? Sure. It'll keep him focused. For the game? We have a committee of good defenders that can do that (Artest, Kobe, Clark, even Meeks for a couple of minutes.

5. Make defense and rebounding the priority. Energy and energy and energy on those two things will fuel energy on the offensive end. We don't need to worry about pick and rolls and about post ups if we're getting the stops we need. Once the stops come rolling in, we'll see EVERYONE get into the offense.

6. Take the pressure off. Tell the team we have to just win a game. Tonight we have to just play a game and beat ____. Tomorrow is a different story, but tonight we're just here to win a game.

we cant


not unless we get rid of the coach (which they wont do) and change the entire culture in that locker room, this ship is gonna crash and burn the rest of the season

Get Stern to lift the salary cap so we can double down and sign 8 guys to max contracts.