Not an AI hallucination: Lakers prepared to make Dan Hurley their next head coach

By my count, nearly a dozen names have been mentioned as head coach candidates or actually interviewed by the Los Angeles Lakers since they fired head coach Darvin Ham weeks ago. Dan Hurley, head coach of back-to-back national champions UConn, was not among them. But despite reporting earlier this week that the Lakers were closing in on J.J. Redick, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that Hurley is likely to be the choice.

To be clear, this doesn't not appear to be finalized yet and and the language Woj is using isn't all that different from the way the Lakers' focus on Redick was described just a few days ago. But this feels like earth-shatteringly likely for a variety of reasons.

The Dan Hurley – Lakers news makes too much sense

The first is that Hurley's name hadn't previously been mentioned in rumors so having someone of Woj's stature report on an out-of-nowhere candidate like this implies that the sourcing is incredibly strong. The second is that Woj is repped by CAA, Shams is repped by Klutch and, given the deep ties between the Lakers, LeBron and Klutch Sports, it's not often that Woj is the first insider on Lakers' news. The last piece of circumstanial evidence here is that Hurley, in a weird way, makes a lot of sense — he's an NBA head coach outsider and a wild-card sort of like Redick, but also has actual head coaching experience and a track record of success with two national titles at UConn.

The term WojBomb is overused but this story is as appropriate for that labeling as I can imagine with a slew of specific and wildly unexpected details including that "Hurley has been at the forefront of the Lakers' search from the beginning of the process," that both LeBron and Davis seem to have been involved in the process more than previously reported and are on board with Hurley and that Bronny is a part of the equation:

"Assuming James returns to L.A. in free agency, the possibility of using the 55th overall pick in this month's NBA draft on USC freshman guard Bronny James makes Hurley an even more intriguing candidate. If that happens, James gets a chance to play with his son and the benefit of Hurley and his staff becoming responsible for Bronny's pro development."

Things could certainly change over the next few days but for now, it sure seems like Dan Hurley is going to be the next coach of the Los Angeles Lakers.