Mike Brown was officially hired as the new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers yesterday and somewhere Kobe Bryant is not happy.The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a terrible collapse in the second round of the NBA playoffs when they lost to the NBA Finals bound Dallas Mavericks, the result of that series saw a change in philosophy from the Lakers front office.
It was a rumor that if the Lakers went to the Finals this postseason, then when former coach Phil Jackson retired, it looked like a lock that assistant Brian Shaw would be his successor.
Thanks to that miserable sweep in the conference semifinals, the Lakers may now be forever screwed...or maybe just screwed until they get rid of the guy.
Mike Brown has been all polished up the last couple days on ESPN, maybe due to his employment there for the last couple months, but there hasn't been much talk about why Brown was fired and what happened to the Cavaliers on his watch.
Yeah, it's easy to look at the fact his teams in Cleveland won and he has one of the best winning percentages as a coach in NBA history, but it isn't exactly rocket science to win with LeBron James in the Eastern Conference during the years where the East was a "rebuilding" conference.
I get the fact that he's a great defensive mind, then hire him as an assistant. There are numerous defensive geniuses that are head coaches and they dot the sidelines in the NFL. Being a great defensive mind doesn't make an automatic great head coaching option.
Mike Brown is a good guy and a good basketball guy, but he will have to completely renovate his coaching image after being quit on in Cleveland and fired. Kobe Bryant is one of the most demanding players in the NBA and if Brown doesn't get his respect from the jump, then Brown could be in for another rocky tenure as a head coach.
Photos Courtesy The Associated Press
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