The list of reasons is long, but here's a few.
At last look, the LA Lakers sported a 15-59 record, by far the worst in the western conference of the NBA. Were it not for the absolutely pitiful Philadelphia 76ers in the east, the once proud Lakers would find themselves the plankton of the entire league.
Byron Scott is now a whopping 95 games under .500 during his short tenure as the Lakers' head coach -- an all-time record. The apologists will say other coaches for other teams have posted a worse winning percentage, but they neglect to mention those coaches didn't last long. As in being fired, and rightfully so.
If one looks at Scott's all-time career coaching record, which included stints elsewhere, they will discover BS, an appropriate enough monogram, is an incredible 162 games under .500. This is also an all-time record among NBA head coaches. And the Lakers still have a few more games to lose this year. Nothing like padding the stats while making history in the world of futility.
Thing is, once upon a time, Byron Scott was a very good player for the same Lakers. But some guys can make the jump from uniform to suit, while others crash and burn. A good example might be Isiah Thomas, who made his playing fame with the Detroit Pistons.
"Zeke" won a couple championships and even found his way into the NBA Hall of Fame. A terrific player indeed. But when he went into the management/business world, he was exposed as an incompetent hack. The former Continental Basketball Association (CBA) he bought quickly slid into bankruptcy. Throw in his total bungling as an "executive" with the Toronto Raptors and NY Knicks. A brief stint as the Indiana Pacers' head coach replacing the legendary Larry Bird (who had moved into the front office) was disastrous. Fired, fired, and fired. So IT, also an appropriate enough monogram, tried his hand at coaching a low-level college team. Florida International. He went 7-25. Did I mention fired? The dude's been all over the map in the sports business world, but a total failure in every venture.
[And BTW, what was up with him smooching Magic Johnson at mid-court before games they played against each other? Can you imagine Bill Laimbeer doing the same with Kevin McHale back in the day? Me neither. It would have been considered not only wimpy, but perhaps even perverted. They would have been ostracized by players and coaches alike, while the media had a field day ridiculing them. But it was OK for Ervin and Isiah. Right.]
Back to Byron Scott. True, the apologists will also say he didn't have much talent to work with in the current version of the Lakers. Fair enough. Most any talented player that could find a way to get away from the me, me, me Kobe Bryant to go elsewhere -- did so in recent years.
Fast forward to the present. BS has another year worth over 4 million dollars on his Laker contract. Plus the team has an option to extend him yet again in the 2017-2018 season for the same price.
Hey, FOUR MILLION BUCKS? To keep the losingest coach in the history of the game calling the shots for a team that is currently pitiful and getting even worse by the day? That would be insanity.
Like Isiah Thomas, Byron Scott wasn't worth four CENTS as any sort of manager. That would seem to beg an obvious question. Given their sad-sack resumes of failure, why would any sane high-level business person in the world of sports offer either another job?
And somewhere, the late Jerry Buss, long-time owner of the Lakers, is probably wondering how in the hell things could go so wrong with the team he led to so much greatness over the years. They've gone from Showtime to Blowtime.
The Lakers have a tough rebuilding task in front of them indeed. Mercifully, they'll finally be rid of Kobe Bryant. They foolishly paid him 24 million bucks for two things this year. To conduct his own pompous "farewell tour" around the league, while showing once again what a selfish player he has always been. The TV folks will show highlights of Kobe Bean nailing a long shot here and there. What they WON'T show is all the off-balance bricks he throws up in between. Or his lack of hustle on the defensive end. Pompous press conferences -- yes. The slightest acknowledgment of his and the team's pitiful play -- no.
But the first thing they have to do is fire Byron Scott. His all-time worst pitiful record as a head coach speaks for itself. Who would replace him? Does it matter? Plug in a Kardashian, Alfred E. Neumann of MAD magazine, or a cardboard cut-out of Miley Cyrus. They couldn't possibly do any worse. Perhaps the latter could "twerk" them into a few more wins.
But it's never gonna happen with BS. He's gotta go.
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