Byron Scott’s hire with the Los Angeles Lakers has been years in the making.
So says Magic Johnson, anyway.
The Lakers legend claims that the late owner told him he wanted Scott to coach the team someday, per For The Win’s Josh Peter:
Byron Scott says he’s patient. But if he’d been more patient, he would have been coach of the Los Angeles Lakers four years ago, according to Magic Johnson.
Johnson said Dr. Jerry Buss, late owner of the Lakers, wanted to hire Scott.
“We were in a suite,’’ Johnson said Tuesday. “(Buss) called me up there and he said, ‘Ervin, you know, I would love, I think, for Byron to coach this team one day.’ And Dr. Buss was going to make Byron the coach when Phil (Jackson) didn’t know what he was going to do.’’
But Scott took the head coaching job with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“I called him and said, ‘B, you took that job too early!” Magic recalled. “‘Dr. Buss wanted you to be the coach.’”
Well, it looks like Dr. Buss’ will be done post-mortem. Possibly.
I’m always leery of anecdotes like these, the ones that discuss people who aren’t around to corroborate them. When it comes to Dr. Buss, who was the standard for great NBA owners, we’ve heard a lot about what he wanted before he passed.
One of those wants was Mike D’Antoni. Dr. Buss apparently wanted to hire him over Phil Jackson as well. Magic Mike inevitably became the head coach, so perhaps there’s merit to that thinking. But this is different.
If Dr. Buss truly wanted B. Scott to coach the Lakers, Scott himself would have known. And if he had known, wouldn’t he have, you know, waited around for the team he used to play for? The club he won championships with?
It’s not like he took some high-profile gig instead. It was the Cleveland Cavaliers…the LeBron James-less Cavaliers. Unless he firmly believed LeBron wouldn’t leave in free agency that summer, the incentive for slighting Los Angeles for Cleveland is nonexistent.
Perhaps Scott just didn’t want to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing. He knew he could have the Cavs job, so he took it. The Lakers were still in limbo. Maybe it was that simple. Or maybe Johnson is speaking in hyperbole, like he tends to do, usually replete with exclamation points. Or maybe part of this is true. Or maybe even all of it’s true. We don’t really know, nor will we ever.
Scott is coaching the Lakers now, four years later than he apparently should be. Though there’s no telling what kind of job he would have done between then and now, anything would have been better than Mike Brown and D’Antoni—two respectable, albeit also-ran, coaches who were doomed to unemployment the moment they took the seat Dr. Buss may have wanted Scott to have.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
