Mike D'Antoni Hired as Lakers Head Coach

By Alex Carr on November 15, 2012

The Los Angeles Lakers front office stunned the sports world last week when they fired second year head coach Mike Brown after just five games, as the team had started off to a very slow 1-4 start. The expectations for this star-studded Lakers team were very high, and Brown and the rest of the team knew that, but his firing still came as a shock to most of the organization. It is incredibly unusual to see a head coach fired this early in the season, especially given the situation where he is working with a group of players who are new to playing with each other. But regardless, Lakers ownership has made their point, they want to win a championship this year and they didn’t think that Mike Brown was the coach that would best help them do that.

Immediately after Brown’s firing, rumors of a return of the great Phil Jackson began swirling around Los Angeles, and for good reason. Jackson, who is arguably the greatest NBA coach of all time, has eleven NBA championships under his belt and five of those came with the Lakers. He had only been out of the game of basketball for little over a year, and has great experience coaching superstar-filled teams as he coached the Jordan, Pippen, Rodman trio in Chicago to several NBA championships. First reports said that Jackson was thinking about taking the job and had even met with possible assistant coaches as well as his agent, but in another shocking move, the Lakers hired Mike D’Antoni on Sunday night.

D’Antoni, whose last stint as a Head Coach was with the New York Knicks, is known throughout the league for being extremely offensive minded, and his teams have been criticized, especially in New York, for their lack of defense. This is quite the opposite of the defensive minded Mike Brown and it appears that the Lakers are trying to change up their offense in a way that will better suit their new lineup. No one is more familiar with D’Antoni’s style of play than Lakers point guard, Steve Nash, who played in his system with the Suns for many years and thrived in it. Clearly, the Lakers have all of the pieces to be a championship team, the question now is does Mike D’Antoni have what it takes to put it together on both sides of the ball? We will all soon find out as he is set to take over one of the most high profile jobs in the world of professional sports on Wednesday.

Image 1 via: www.latimes.com

 

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