It took the Los Angeles Lakers a week into their offseason to fire head coach Byron Scott. The move had been widely expected, but the Lakers’ decision to hold off on the move did catch a lot of people by surprise.
A couple days after Los Angeles officially announced that Golden State Warriors assistant Luke Walton will be the team’s new head coach, Scott opened up about its decision to fire him.
“I was a little blindsided by it,” Scott said on The Dan Patrick Show. “Um, it was one of those things that was unfortunate. You know, especially for me. I had thought the situation we talked about a few years ago, that they knew the situation was going to take a few years.”
A lack of any real talent surely played a role in the Lakers’ struggles during Scott’s two-year tenure as the team’s head coach. Couple that with a regression from Kobe Bryant following his Achilles injury during the 2012-13 season, and things didn’t seem attainable in Southern California.
Even with these less-than-stellar conditions acting as a backdrop, the Lakers’ lack of success under Scott cannot be denied.
After finishing the 2014-15 campaign with a 21-61 record, Los Angeles put up just 17 wins this past season.
All said, Scott’s two seasons as the team’s head coach resulted in two of the three-worst records in the history of the franchise.
It’s hard for Scott to seriously indicate he was blindsided after such a horrendous stretch as the head coach in Los Angeles.