Pau Gasol Rips Lakers Head Coach Mike D’Antoni

The Dwightmare Part II has kept the Lakers busy, distracting them from plenty of other issues, one of which is the relationship between head coach Mike D’Antoni and Pau Gasol.

Speaking with David Alarcón of the Spanish basketball website basket4us.com, Pau said that D’Antoni wasn’t the right coach for the Lakers.

“D’Antoni is a coach for small players—running, shooting threes,” he said, as translated by hoopshype.com. “And that style doesn’t fit with the current roster.”

Nothing like being honest. And right.

Los Angeles doesn’t house a slew of shooters, the kind that make D’Antoni’s offensive system run over the opposition. Their most valuable three-point threats are Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace, Steve Nash and Jodie Meeks, which isn’t saying much at all. Of those four, only Nash has ever been considered a lights-out shooter.

That Gasol openly admitted this could be a problem. Unless he was trying to motivate the Lakers to put together a roster that better suit’s D’Antoni himself, this was a not-so-subtle shot at the mustached wonder. In truth, that doesn’t surprise us.

Magic Mike, Pau and Dwight had their tactical differences last season. D’Antoni doesn’t typically run the ball through the post, where both Howard and Gasol are most effective. Contributing to the tension was D’Antoni’s attempt to turn Pau into a stretch forward. Gasol has always been what you would consider an inside out big man, but once you take away the “outside” he’s noticeably less effective. Assimilating into a three-point savant really wasn’t an option, and by trying to force Pau to do so, he marginalized his role, one of the catalysts behind the former All-Star’s disappointing season.

In all fairness to D’Antoni, he began to run the ball through the post more in the latter quarter of the season. Both Dwight and Pau appeared to get more touches and Kobe and Nash were actively feeding them the ball down low. He made concessions and thus, I really don’t understand the lack of support coming out of Los Angeles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpUPvRKQ5V0

Successful superteams pride themselves on self-sacrifice. Not that they want to, that’s just the cost of doing business with a foray of superstars. Roles have to be tweaked, coaching strategies manipulated and egos checked at the door. The biggest problem for the Lakers is that no player, outside of maybe Nash, seemed prepared to embrace a “whatever it takes” type mantra.

Gasol can say that D’Antoni isn’t a good fit for the roster all he wants, it doesn’t matter. D’Antoni is the head coach and that’s not going to change anytime soon. The Lakers likely want him to get a training camp under his belt, give him a full season to show that he can coach under there circumstances. He’s doomed to fail, however, if the majority of the players don’t believe in him.

Then there’s always the summer of 2014 to consider. If D’Antoni makes it through next season, he will be coaching a vastly different Lakers team leading into the 2014-15 campaign. At the moment, Nash is the player under contract for the season, leaving the Lakers to fill out the rest of the roster with what they hope is a bevy of other superstars (LeBron James anyone?).

Can D’Antoni really be held accountable for any failures if he’s given a revolving roster? What good will another season do if the team is going to look completely different once again in one year’s time?

D’Antoni may not be the best fit for Los Angeles’ current roster, but for now, everyone involved needs to make the most of it, Pau included. The former has been willing to adjust his style to accommodate the needs of his players, and that’s his job. But it’s Gasol’s job to ensure he buys into what D’Antoni’s preaching for the better of the team.

Right now, he doesn’t seem to be buying into any groundwork D’Antoni is laying. Which needs to change. Immediately, and forever.