Joseph Jamoralin

Mike Brown

You know, the greatest thing about being a fan of the Lakers is that they have always found a way to come back from an unsuccessful season. And to us fans, an unsuccessful season is considered to be anything short of showing up in the NBA Finals. Watching my Lakers only go to the 2nd round for the past 2 seasons has been pretty tough.

With that being said, I believe we’ll be back as a tough contender. I have full faith in our front office and I know they’ll make the best decisions for the team. The team needed help on the defensive end and it definitely showed against the younger teams. The Lakers organization responded by hiring defensive-minded Mike Brown. Now I wasn’t expecting the Lakers to come back into championship shape in such a short season, but I believe they can come back with Mike Brown and the proper players in the near future.

Here’s why… Coach Mike Brown has a very exceptional resume. He holds a 341-201 record as an Assistant coach for both the San Antonio Spurs (2000-2003) under future hall of famer Popovich’s system and under Rick Carlisle’s system with the Indiana Pacers (2003-2005). He was a successful Head Coach in Cleveland. Despite having only one finals appearance with Lebron, he was able to turn a disappointing Cleveland Cavaliers team into a top defensive team within 2 years of being their head coach. No, it wasn’t all Lebron… he was playing under Paul Silas’ system and they failed to even make it to the playoffs in Lebron’s first 2 seasons. Brown later on was picked as the NBA’s Coach of the Year (and Eastern All Star Team Head Coach) after leading the league with 66 wins in 2009 and 61 wins in 2010.

With the Cavs, Mike Brown averaged 54.4 wins per season with a 66.3 percent winning percentage, the fifth highest in NBA history. He failed to lead them to a Championship, but that was a different team and the roster didn’t extend much beyond Lebron James (with the exception of Anderson Varejao— who became an All-NBA Defensive team member under Mike Brown’s system). 

Basically what I’m saying is, give him a chance Laker Nation!! He is given the chance to coach a more talented team. I’m not saying our bench is deep, but the talent is more spread out. On top of that, he has players that have won 2 titles together and know exactly what it takes to get back there. Through the 2012 season we saw glimpses of what Mike is capable of. Off the top of my head, I’d like to note the great defensive play by the Lakers in certain games especially the game against the Portland Trailblazers in which they held the team to a 7 point first quarter. Also, throughout the season the Lakers didn’t lose more than 3 in a row.

For the haters, did you see the roster we had last season? you can’t expect a new coach to just step in on a shortened season and have a championship run with a team that has fairly new players (including Troy Murphy and Josh Mcroberts…really?) and returning players that are used to running the triangle for a majority of their careers. He was struggling to find a permanent rotation for the team because he didn’t have much time with 2 weeks of training camp and a 66-game season with sometimes 4 games a week.

Ultimately, it comes down to the players. Mitch Kupchak doesn’t fuck around, he is always working. He is always looking for ways to improve the Lakers’ roster. He had the right idea with the CP3 trade, but we all know what happened there. The trades for Sessions and Hill were also some good moves that saved alot of cap space. Adding Steve Nash, Antawn Jamison, and re-signing Jordan Hill were all great moves by this guy. We don’t need a completely young team, but having young players with promising futures along with these great veterans would help greatly. Mitch is far from done and the same goes for the Lakers. We’re not going to disappear for 22 years like the Celtics organization and their fans. We’ll be back!!