Bryon Scott’s job is safe.
For now.
Not 20 games into his second season as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, it already looks like Scott will have played babysitter for the two worst teams in franchise history. That’s not the kind of resume that will help you keep your job—especially when you entered said job with a sub-.500 record to begin with.
The Lakers, though, apparently have no intention of evaluating Byron Scott through this crappy scope—at least not right now, according to USA Today‘s Sam Amick:
While there’s a never-say-never qualifier to the notion that coach Byron Scott could be replaced midseason, it appears for now that he won’t be held responsible for either the dreadful record or the fruitless way in which Bryant continues to play. The coaching component, it should be noted, could always change if this losing streak (currently seven games) grew too big to bear.
The strong sense, however, is that Scott is seen largely as an innocent bystander in Bryant’s bon voyage campaign. Scott signed a four-year, $17 million deal in July 2014 to reunite with his former teammate, but the contract is only guaranteed through next season.
It’s impossible to blame the entirety of the Lakers’ woes on Byron Scott. The team lacks NBA-ready and viable talent. He can’t do anything about that. And though his outdated Byron Scott-isms aren’t helping his image, there’s little he can do about Kobe Bryant. It’s Bean’s last season. He is going to take whatever shots he wants, whenever he wants. And the Lakers cannot bench him. That would be unbecoming of his swan song.
It’s not like the Lakers are playing for anything anyway. The playoffs are more than out of reach, and while Julius Randle, D’Angelo Russell and Jordan Clarkson all need to continue seeing extensive time and ample touches, this is not a team flush with young prospects to develop.
Scott is actually doing the Lakers a favor by letting Kobe run rampant. The Philadelphia 76ers own the rights to the Lakers’ first-round pick this year if it falls outside the top three, and by losing more now, there’s a chance they get to retain it, adding yet another cornerstone to the core of Clarkson, Randle and Russell they’ll attempt to build around once Kobe bids farewell.
Nevertheless, Scott’s job doesn’t feel incredibly safe. He has always looked like a stopgap—the face of tough times that only serves to bridge the gap between the Lakers’ struggles and the tail end of their rebuild. And right now, the length of his contract would seem to support that notion.
Unless the Lakers hit it big in free agency, they’ll be bad next season as well. After that, they can bring Scott back for another year, or sensing that better days are ahead, they could look to shell out big money for a more successful name.
This, of course, is merely speculation. And for all Scott says or does wrong, it’s difficult to glean anything valuable from his stint on the Los Angeles’ sidelines. The Lakers are so bad, so utterly terrible, that it handicaps our ability to meaningfully judge Scott.
In the end, it’s this—not what he has done, but what he hasn’t had the opportunity to do—that may very well save Byron Scott’s job.
