The maelstrom of unexpected activity in advance of Thursday's trade deadline made it easy to forget about one of the league's most untenable situations. It wasn't even two weeks ago that multiple reports suggest LeBron James' camp would prefer the Los Angeles Lakers move forward with a coach other than Luke Walton.
It goes without saying that the third-year head man's job security has decreased in the interim, after a heated locker-room argument between he and team veterans following a loss to the Golden State Warriors, then Tuesday's humiliating 42-point drubbing at hand of the Indiana Pacers, playing without All-Star guard Victor Oladipo.
Time is of the essence for Los Angeles regardless. The clock is ticking on the chances of any team acquiring Anthony Davis before Thursday's afternoon trade deadline, and the Lakers are suddenly tenth in the Western Conference with only 28 regular-season games left to play. If a change is coming for the purple and gold on the sideline, it needs to happen fast, lest James' first season in Los Angeles be even more wasted than the realities of the league hierarchy indicated before the season.
In making a decision on Walton's future, Rob Pelinka and Magic Johnson can take solace in the fact that James has been through a midseason coaching change before. The league was rocked three years ago when the Cleveland Cavaliers, kowtowing to James' implicit desires, replaced embattled coach David Blatt with team favorite Tyronn Lue. All Cleveland proceeded to do from there was run roughshod over Eastern Conference playoff competition before completing the most notable comeback in league history, against the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.
Any expectation of a similar end result of Walton's potential dismissal is foolish, obviously. The Lakers seem primed for a lower-tier playoff seed at best, and were a clear rung below sub-contenders like the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder when they were playing their best basketball of the season, before James was lost for five weeks with a groin injury that continues to slow him.
Not even pulling off an increasingly long-shot trade for Davis before the deadline would vault Los Angeles into true contention. James and Davis would be the league's first or second-best tandem, to be sure, but the league has evolved beyond the point at which surrounding a pair of superstars with replacement-level rotation players is enough to win a title.
Maybe the Lakers' inevitably secondary standing isn't factoring into a decision when it comes to Walton. If he's lost the team for good, by virtue of half the roster's involvement in trade rumors more than any specific fault of his own, Pelinka and Johnson have the obligation to make a change.
Father Time isn't waiting for James anymore, as his recent injury and subsequently timid re-acclimation to the court make abundantly, depressingly clear. Less certain is whether or not Los Angeles has an interim coach on staff who could successfully navigate inevitably choppy post-deadline waters while righting the ship toward the playoffs.
Brian Shaw would almost certainly be the man for the job. The former Lakers point guard re-joined his former team as associate head coach in 2016, hand-picked to help guide Walton through the rigors of his first head-coaching job. Shaw remains respected in league circles, but the circumstances of his departure from the Denver Nuggets deserve re-examination before Los Angeles gives him the reins for the season's remainder.
Shaw went a combined 56-85 during his year and a half in Denver, alienating players, management, and media alike with his old-school principles and occasionally gruff demeanor. He made an infamously laughable attempt to relate to his young team in his final season with the Nuggets, rapping a pre-game scouting report. He was fired approximately six weeks later.
The Lakers' coaching controversy is about far more than Shaw, though, just like their ambitions extend far beyond this season. Pelinka and Johnson need to find a coach who James respects, and thus commands respect from the rest of the locker room. If moving on from Walton – hired by the team's former front-office regime, remember – seems like too steep a price to placate James, Los Angeles must realize the bed it made by teaming up with the league's most singular force of power and personality. This is what the Lakers signed up for, like it or not.
Either way, Los Angeles needs to muster some semblance of stability after the trade deadline. And if firing Walton is the surest way of doing so, and increasing the possibility of James making the playoffs for a staggering 14th consecutive season, it's a move that must be made. It's just unfortunate that Shaw, with no track record of success as a head coach, would be the one inheriting such a fraught situation.
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