Brian Shaw shocked at how the Los Angeles Lakers handled Phil Jackson – NBA News
The Los Angeles Lakers fired former head coach Mike Brown and hired Mike D’Antoni in his place, but not before flirting with legendary head coach Phil Jackson. The Lakers management met with Jackson before they decided their candidate for the vacant spot, but did not wait for him to come back with an answer and hired D’Antoni in a move that has many NBA fans as well as Lakers fans puzzled. And although Jackson has said that he is over the whole thing and does not feel hurt or slighted, Brian Shaw seems to think otherwise.
Shaw was the lead assistant to Jackson over the later part of his stint with the Lakers. He was sort of the right hand man for Jackson and had almost perfected his offence. However, Shaw did not get the job after Jackson retired as the team’s front office wanted to go in a completely different direction and move away from the Jackson era. And now, a few years after Shaw’s departure from the Lakers, he says he is shocked at the way the Lakers dealt with their former legendary coach.
“Under the circumstances, Phil Jackson, who’s been there and done that and put a lot of money in everybody’s pockets around here, the way it was done. It’s mind-boggling. I was joking with him, at least you got a phone call, even though it was midnight. In 11 years he was coach here, he took the team to the Finals seven times and won five. I don’t know if any of the other 29 teams would have done him the way he was done [by the Lakers] after he had done so much for the organization and the city,” said Shaw on Sunday while talking to the Los Angeles Times.
The Lakers managed to get a better coach than Mike Brown in Mike D’Antoni, but they will now have to live with the fact that they chose D’Antoni over Jackson. They made a big mistake in how they handled their coaching search, and now the new coach as well as the team management is under pressure to deliver as they will always be compared to the coach they could have gotten, Jackson.
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