The Los Angeles Lakers aren’t the lucrative team they used to be and finding a top notch head coach won’t be as was as it may have once been. But that doesn’t mean their search for a new coach to replace Mike D’Antoni won’t be intense and highly watched.
Already, less than 24 hours after D’Antoni stepped away from the gig, the list of names for the job is growing faster than the list of celebrities saying they want to buy the Clippers. While we’ve heard a slew of college coaches mentioned like Fred Hoiberg and Kevin Ollie, ESPN is reporting that the Lakers plan on courting Kentucky head coach John Calipari.
This is a tough one to get a read on as the Lakers are a primo job for someone as flashy has Calipari but the Lakers opening comes a few weeks too late. Had this all come up when it was still undecided how many of his Kentucky players were going to declare, the chances of Calipari taking the job were a lot higher.
But now that Willie Cauley-Stein, Andrew and Aaron Harrison and a handful of other players are returning for another year, Calipari doesn’t have as many reasons to want to leave. However, that likely won’t stop the Lakers from courting him as they’ve already made apparent.