The Los Angeles Lakers' aura is fading by the day. After firing former head coach Darvin Ham, UConn boss Dan Hurley turned down the team's $70 million offer to replace him.
Laker nation is now having a large-scale meltdown on X, with many fans complaining that the team should've thrown more cash at the two-time NCAA champion.
“They wouldn’t go up to $100M? Welp,” former Lakers SB Nation writer Ben Rosales tweeted.
@tommyswings fired back, claiming an offer that high would be unrealistic.
“For someone who has never coached a single professional game? $11.67m AAV would have had him 5th in the league:
1. Kerr $17.5m
2. Pop $16m
3. Spo $15m
4. Monty W $13m,” he tweeted.
However, overpaying Hurley wouldn't have harmed Los Angeles financially, as Rosales explained.
“Coaches don’t have a salary cap,” he said. “It’s less what was market and more understanding the table stakes to get a guy not looking to leave to make the hop. And if he turned that down, sure, but you had to bowl him over with something truly massive.”
Active journalists are on Rosales' side as well. The Lakers have a track record of lowballing coaches, via CBS Sports' Sam Quinn.
“The Lakers only offered Ty Lue three years in 2019,” Quinn tweeted. “When Frank Vogel WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP in 2020, he only got a one-year extension, and it came a year later. Now this. Idk. Either the Lakers don't understand the modern coaching market or they choose to ignore it.”
Although a six-year, $70 million contract offer isn't small potatoes, Los Angeles' recent coaching stretch does little to buy them benefit of the doubt in this situation. Considering Hurley's prolific run with the Huskies, as well as the Lakers' currently questionable roster, they would've had to give a historic offer to even have a remote chance at landing him.
@JustRyCole, The Athletic's social media manager, put it simply.
“Lakers got played.”
Are people overreacting, or were the Lakers being cheap?
The Lakers need to be more self-aware in the future
Los Angeles is no longer the dominant squad it once was. Back in the Kobe Bryant era, it was an easy sell to get a quality head coach to head out west. Now, the club is heavily reliant on Anthony Davis and 39-year-old LeBron James. Outside of them, the Lakers don't have any building blocks to use for their future. Austin Reaves, D'Angelo Russell, and Rui Hachimura are solid role players, but they're not good enough to be first or second options.
Meanwhile, Hurley has a chance to be the first college coach to three-peat since UCLA legend John Wooden. Even though coaching a big-market NBA team is enticing, Los Angeles still should've given the 51-year-old an offer he couldn't refuse. It takes a lot to get someone to leave a good situation for a questionable one, no matter how big the respective media markets are.
Going forward, the Lakers should take this as a lesson that they should probably offer quality candidates a king's ransom, perhaps the first or second-highest-paying deals in the league. If it doesn't hurt the salary cap, why not? No one will blame them for overpaying the coach if they become elite again.
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