Before Wednesday’s game against the Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers coach Frank Vogel addressed recent rumors about his delicate situation as head of the team’s bench. Despite being between a rock and a hard place right now, the technician was very calm.
“I don’t feel like I’m on the edge of the precipice,” Vogel said, according to the journalist from ESPN Dave McMenamin. “It’s not hard to do my job. I am very focused on the task at hand. I’ve always been like this.”
Although the head coach expressed an apparent calm, the truth is that the decisions made in the final moments of the loss against Indiana did show some urgency. More specifically, Vogel opted to sit Russell Westbrook at the critical moment after Westbrook again struggled shooting and was outplayed defensively. The coach justified this move by saying that he used the players he thought “were going to win the game.”
According to McMenamin, the Lakers’ coaching staff has debated for weeks whether to sit Westbrook late in games, although no consensus had been reached due to concerns about how it would affect the player mentally. A resolution that was taken against the Pacers after receiving the support of the management.
Although Frank Vogel will continue in the candlestick in the next dates, at least it seems that a certain consensus is glimpsed between management and staff technician to try to reverse the situation before resorting to more drastic solutions.
(Cover photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
