It was only minutes after the Lakers won their final game of the season that ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the news about Frank Vogel.
According to Wojnarowski’s tweet on Sunday evening, Vogel had “coached his final game” for the organization, and this decision was “expected to be shared with him” as soon as Monday. Of course, if Woj tweeted it, all of the reporters in the post-game press conference knew about it before Vogel did.
So when Vogel was asked for comment, he told reporters: “I haven’t been told [expletitve].”
It was a massively awkward interaction, and a hideous situation for the Lakers to put their championship-winning coach in the middle of. Especially considering so many more people were to blame for this disastrous season, it looks especially bad.
"I'm going to enjoy tonight, celebrate what these young guys did, and we'll deal with tomorrow tomorrow." Frank Vogel addresses the media regarding reports about his future with the Lakers. pic.twitter.com/bZ61Rerpqp
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) April 11, 2022
This is nothing new for the Lakers, though. When the organization pursued Kawhi Leonard in free agency during the 2019 offseason, the two-time NBA MVP was reportedly upset about how much information surrounding the process leaked to the media during the courtship.
Look, news travels fast. It’s not unusual for a player to find out that he was traded via Twitter, and we have even seen some learn such news about their lives in the middle of a game.
But this situation was different because unlike a trade, which isn’t final until it’s final, this decision was already made. There were rumors of it happening back in January. It wasn’t impulsive. Vogel’s fate was signed and sealed, just not delivered.
So, yeah. This was messy, and it isn’t going to ingratiate the organization in peril to any potential coaching suitors. The lore of the purple and gold may be strong enough to find another strong candidate, but after botching chances to land Ty Lue or Monty Williams back in 2019 before eventually settling on Vogel, who knows?
Maybe a well-qualified coach would be wise to stay away from this team. If you read the actions that NBA Twitter had last night, anyway, you’d certainly be left with that impression:
