Pros and Cons for Los Angeles Lakers' Top Head Coaching Candidates
The Los Angeles Lakers are perhaps the NBA's most famous and most talked about franchise. So it should come as little surprise how aggressively their coaching search is being covered.
On Tuesday, we learned from The Athletic's Jovan Buha and Shams Charania that former player and rising media star JJ Redick is on the list. And on Wednesday, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski gave us the names of several others who'll be interviewed.
As is often the case, the pool of candidates includes multiple longtime assistants who don't have a head coaching track record to analyze, but that doesn't mean we don't know anything about them.
There are pros and cons to any potential hire, and the biggest ones for each of the names above can be found below.
James Borrego
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James Borrego isn't one of those candidates without head coaching experience.
From 2018-19 through 2021-22, he was the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, where he won 45.8 percent of his games. Given that franchise's performance before and since Borrego's stint, that winning percentage actually isn't too bad. In his final season there, he coached the Hornets to 43 wins and a top-10 offense.
Pros
Borrego has a history of both empowering and trusting his players, particularly his stars. In his first and last seasons with the Hornets, he allowed Kemba Walker and then LaMelo Ball to orchestrate a bit on their own or color outside the lines.
He was also creative defensively, allowing his teams to occasionally play some zone defense or switch-heavy schemes that resemble defense.
Finally, Borrego has long been known as a coach who can develop players and maximize their potential.
Cons
Of course, L.A. isn't necessarily in a position where a heavy emphasis on player development is all that important. This is a veteran team with plenty of playoff experience that needs more on-the-fly adjustments than in-the-background improvement.
There's also a sort of double-edged sword effect to being a players' coach, especially on a team with LeBron James. Being overly deferential can get you philosophically run over, like Frank Vogel with the Phoenix Suns this season.
David Adelman
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The son of longtime Sacramento Kings coach Rick Adelman, David Adelman has been an assistant with the Denver Nuggets for seven seasons. He spent six years with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic prior to then.
Of course, during his stint with the Nuggets, he was present for the rise of Nikola Jokić to "best player in the world" status and won a title in 2023.
Pros
Though he doesn't have any NBA head coaching experience, Adelman has spent more than enough time around the job. He grew up with his father, Rick, who's 10th all-time in career NBA coaching wins. The younger Adelman was a three-time coach of the year in the high school ranks in Portland. And he's been Michael Malone's lead assistant for the best run in Nuggets history.
Beyond that, and along with Malone and Jokić, Adelman has been one of the architects of a Denver offense that has flummoxed teams (including the Lakers) for years.
On a team with multiple high-usage players and creators like the Lakers (with LeBron, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves and D'Angelo Russell), Adelman's pass-first, egalitarian attacks would make L.A. less predictable.
Cons
Of course, actually sitting in the head coach's seat is a little different than being around it. And as a first-time head coach, Adelman might find it difficult to manage the personalities of a veteran-laden roster like the Lakers'.
Like Borrego (or Darvin Ham), there would be a very real chance of Adelman being overrun by LeBron and Davis.
Sam Cassell
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After spending 15 years playing in the NBA, Sam Cassell has now been an assistant coach for four different teams across another 15 seasons.
Three decades of experience in the league is nothing to sneeze at.
Pros
We'll start with that last line. Sometimes, it's nice to go all in on fresh blood and a new perspective. Someone who comes out of the blue with unique ideas can be a good way to shake things up. The NBA coaching carousel often gets about as monotonous as, well, a carousel.
But Cassell might be able to sort of straddle the line between experienced (again, 30 years in the NBA) and original (he's never been a head coach before).
He might also be uniquely suited to communicate with a team packed with star players. Most will instantly have some level of respect for him because he played in the NBA for 15 seasons and made an All-Star team. But he also has another decade-and-a-half in an assistant's chair. One of the most important aspects of that role is often being a buffer between player and head coach. Cassell has surely developed plenty of good relationships with players in that role.
Cons
Again, we are talking about a first-time head coach. Years as an assistant and a couple stars doesn't mean things are going to go perfectly. Just ask Adrian Griffin. If the Lakers hire Cassell, there will be at least some growing pains.
There's also a chance Cassell's brutally honest approach will take some getting used to, as well.
For most of his career, LeBron has had a more significant influence on his teams' coaching and front-office decisions than most players. And that could lead to some clashes between a coach like Cassell and his best player.
Micah Nori
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Another longtime assistant, Micah Nori has spent 15 seasons with the Toronto Raptors, Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons and now Minnesota Timberwolves.
And at the moment, he's essentially an acting head coach for the T'Wolves (though the injured Chris Finch is still on the bench for these playoff games).
Pros
While Nori would indeed be a first-year coach, this experience he's having against the Nuggets could be legitimately helpful.
He's getting a crash roaming the sidelines and running huddles against the defending champions. And this unusual circumstance could provide some nice momentum into a head coaching gig.
Another strength that might not seem all that important at first glance is that Nori is legitimately funny.
And that does more than just give us some funny clips to react to. A sense of humor can endear a coach to his players and take the edge off stressful situations.
Cons
The seemingly laid-back attitude could have some drawbacks, too. NBA coaching often requires some pretty fiery interactions with players, officials or assistants. Commanding respect is as important as commanding a laugh. And it might take Nori some time to find the right balance there.
JJ Redick
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After 15 NBA seasons in which he averaged 2.1 threes and shot 41.5 percent from deep, JJ Redick became a sports media star, seemingly overnight.
His podcasts (including one with co-host LeBron) are massive hits, and he's already been promoted to ESPN's top NBA commentary crew. He just retired from playing after the 2020-21 season.
Pros
The most obvious connection here is Redick and LeBron's Mind the Game podcast, in which they analyze film, individual actions on both ends of the floor and generally try to elevate the level of discourse surrounding the NBA.
There's already a good relationship between Redick and L.A.'s face of the franchise, and that means a lot.
Redick's other show, The Old Man and the Three, offers hints about the kind of coach he might be, too. Beyond interviewing players (where he's not afraid to ask tough questions), Redick spends real time with X's and O's enthusiasts like Steve Jones and Nekias Duncan.
Redick clearly thinks very deeply about the game of basketball, and that contemplative nature would serve him well in this role.
Cons
Redick is another candidate who'd be a first-year head coach, but he also doesn't have the years of experience as an assistant that Nori, Cassell and Adelman have. His potential path to the head coach's chair is a little closer to that of Jason Kidd and Steve Nash, and their early coaching years were, to put it mildly, a struggle.
The almost immediate jump from playing to being a head coach is a tough one to make, and the difficulty could be compounded by Redick's relationship with James.
"If it's JJ, it's going to be a cynical locker room," former player Udonis Haslem said on ESPN. "You're gonna have guys that are gonna say, 'Is Coach going to do a podcast after the game with LeBron?' You're gonna have a cynical locker room with guys that are gonna side-eye everything that JJ says. Because they're gonna wonder is it JJ's message or LeBron's message."
That's not necessarily the foregone conclusion Haslem suggests it is, but it's reasonable to believe at least some players might feel that way. That's also something Redick could overcome in time, by establishing relationships all over the roster, but it is potentially a hurdle to get over.
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