I was just kidding when I slipped the line into a column last week. But the more I thought about it, the more I believed I’d stumbled across the solution to the Great Lakers Coach Search: Make LeBron James the player-coach.
Seriously.
I’m not alone here. A couple of readers have made the same suggestion in recent days. And Byron Scott, someone with intimate knowledge of Jeanie Buss’ organization – a member of the family, practically – came to the same conclusion during a national TV conversation on Fox Sports’ “Undisputed,” telling hosts Skip Bayless and Keyshawn Johnson: “Make him the coach!”
But there’s one tiny problem: It’s not permitted under NBA rules.
When the salary cap was instituted for the 1984-85 season as part of collective bargaining, the player-coach concept was prohibited because of the possibility that a team might use a highly paid player as coach – someone such as LeBron, who would make $51.7 million next season if he picks up his Lakers option – to circumvent the cap. Can’t have that.
(If they were ever to change that rule – say, to offer a player $51.7 million to play and $1 to coach, might it be known as the LeBron Exception?)
In every other way, making James the coach would have made sense. Here’s Byron again, on Undisputed:
“Listen, I got nothing but love and respect for LeBron. I love him, I think he’s one of the greatest players that ever played this game. But it’s obvious to me, at least, that he’s making a lot of decisions that’s going on in this organization, from a coaching standpoint to a player standpoint. So if you’re going to allow him to make those decisions, all right, sit on the bench and make those decisions as well. Be the head coach. Player-head coach … back to the Bill Russell days.”
Yes, superstars in the NBA do have enough power that executives consult them before major moves, like coaching changes. And superstars can get coaches fired. Did it happen in this case? Hmmm …
Boston’s Dave Cowens was actually the NBA’s last player-coach in 1978-79, the pre-cap era, before giving it up to return to playing. It was a fairly common practice in the league’s early days, but the last successful player-coaches were Russell with the Celtics from the 1966-67 season through ’68-69 and Lenny Wilkens, who was a player-coach with Seattle (’69-’72) and later Portland (’74-75).
When Russell was named the Celtics’ player-coach for the 1966-67 season to succeed the retiring Red Auerbach, the announcement was partially – largely? – to troll the Lakers. The news conference came after L.A. had won Game 1 of the ‘66 Finals in Boston, and it was a superb piece of gamesmanship. (Lakers coach Fred Schaus hated it, which probably tells you all you need to know – that, and the fact the Celtics wound up winning Auerbach’s last Finals as coach in seven games.)
Auerbach correctly figured that the only guy who could maintain Russell’s level of production was Russell himself. And he was right. Russell the player-coach won two additional rings in 1968 and ’69, both at the Lakers’ expense.
Interestingly, years later Auerbach was asked by Sam McManis of the L.A. Times about Russell the coach, who later was a non-playing coach at Seattle and Sacramento.
“Fair,” he said. “I did it to keep his interest going. It was beginning to fade by that time. It seemed to me that the best way to motivate Bill Russell at that point was to put him in charge … Bill could’ve been a great coach, but he didn’t like the nitty-gritty of it. He had too many distractions, but if he wanted to, he would’ve been a great coach.”
The difference: Russell likely would have played hard for another coach without trying to undermine him.
So, back to Scott this week talking about LeBron: “As far as I’m concerned, the only person that he’s going to really trust is himself. … It’s (coaching in general) one of those jobs right now where all the pressure and all the blame is always on the coach. You know, you got superstars and you got coaches. Coaches are getting blamed. Superstars aren’t. You don’t have these guys taking accountability for what they’ve done in the playoffs or what they’ve done over the regular season. It all goes back to the coaches.”
Under those circumstances, would LeBron have actually wanted the job? We may never know.
Yes, the NBA is much different now from the days when player-coaches were, if not routine, at least not unusual. In that era, a head coach might have had one assistant, maximum. Now, with a half-dozen or so assistants in sweats on the sideline, wouldn’t such additional support have made it easier for a player to take on that dual role?
Of course, if the Lakers turn around and hire someone with no coaching experience like, say, JJ Redick, they might as well have made LeBron head coach without portfolio.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Western Conference, a former Laker coach probably could have anticipated what was coming. In the days after the Phoenix Suns’ were swept by Minnesota, owner Mat Ishbia actually said this: “Ask the other 29 GMs – 26 of them would trade their whole team for our whole team and our draft picks and everything as is.”
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(Sudden thought: Would you trade LeBron and A.D. for Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, straight up? The caveat: You’d probably have to take Bradley Beal as a throw-in.)
As soon as Ishbia uttered those words, Frank Vogel should have known where the blame was going to fall. Sure enough, he was fired Thursday after one season with the Suns and 49 regular-season victories. With the Lakers, at least, he lasted three seasons and won a title with LeBron and A.D.
Again: Coaches are held accountable. Superstars – and owners and executives – usually aren’t.
jalexander@scng.com