Anthony Irwin, Lakers Reporter

Have you ever covered a carpet stain with a rug? Ignored a leaky faucet? Pretended your half-painted living room is supposed to look that way?

Well, you're not alone. We've all got unfinished home projects. Whether it's a door that sticks, or a disorganized closet, or an AC unit that only works half the time.

It all matters. You just haven't taken care of it yet. But there's an easier way. Just download the Thumbtack app. You can search for what you need done and find tons of highly rated pros right in your neighborhood.

Check prices, reviews, and book a pro right on the spot. Plus, you'll know what to tackle next. Because Thumbtack is the app that shows you what to do, who to hire, and when. Pull out your phone, and in just a few taps, say goodbye to all those unfinished home projects. And say hello to caring for your home the easier way.

Download Thumbtack and start a project today. Whatever you love, hear it right here on TuneIn. Go to TuneIn.com or download the TuneIn app to start listening. Let's welcome in the Lakers reporter for Lakers Daily and the host of Lakers Lounge on Odyssey. He's Anthony Irwin.

He's kind enough to join us on the Zach Gelb show on the Infinity Sports Network. Anthony, appreciate you doing this. How you been?

For having me. You know, nice quiet week or so here for the Lakers. There's nothing really going on. Yeah, let me start you off with Hurley. So, right when it first came out, I thought to myself, not a fit, don't think it's going to happen. Then, as I started to think about it more, I'm like, he's going to be the next coach of the Lakers just because it came out of nowhere. When it was announced yesterday he was staying with UConn, what was the initial reaction when the Lakers didn't get Dan Hurley? So, the Lakers were pretty surprised. They really thought that they had a chance here at getting him.

They were really impressed. The Lakers were impressed with their meetings. It's shocking, I know, but the Lakers thought that they made a compelling offer.

They were confident walking out of those meetings that they had a chance at Hurley. The offer has been very polarizing in league circles where some people are saying they were getting ready to pay a rookie head coach more than everybody but a handful of other coaches in the NBA. If you're optimistic about that offer and others have pointed out that you got across the Monty Williams bar in that threshold to convince somebody to leave a potential three-peat the way that the Lakers were asking Hurley to leave there. So, the Lakers as recently or in that run-up to his decision, they were somewhat in the dark on Monday morning and they were waiting just like the rest of us.

They found out I think a little earlier than everybody did but they thought they had a chance and now they're really kind of left scrambling. Yeah, when I was spitballing on Thursday, I thought, like you said, the Monty Williams kind of situation, you know, get him a little bit past that, go 80 million over six years. The offer, according to Adrian Rojanowski, ended up being 70 million over six years. It's like, okay, the Lakers could say they wanted to go get Dan Hurley but to me, that's not a godfather offer and it feels like the Lakers dropped the ball on this one. Yeah, so there were reports out there that the Lakers were, you know, the offer that was being expected that was pretty clearly being leaked by I thought Hurley's side of things was that $100 million threshold. And I reached out to the people that I've spoken to or that I normally lean on for Lakers information and when I asked them, this is pretty clearly him saying what he's expecting from you. How confident are you that the Lakers will get to that level?

And the people that I was talking to gave me like a cautiously optimistic yes, that they thought that they were prepared to go that high and that's what I reported before the weekend. And, you know, so when I found out that the offer was only six years, 70 million bucks, I thought that the Lakers didn't use their full budget at their disposal for this thing. And I don't know, given that the Lakers just don't seem to have a plan B here, you really have to make that godfather offer, you have to get your guy if you are left scrambling the way that the Lakers have been left scrambling here. This is just really seemed to me to be a very disorganized process.

Anthony Irwin here with us. So then it makes me ask why? Why didn't the Lakers make that above and beyond offer to make sure that they get Dan Hurley? They think that it's an honor to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. They think that there has to there should be kind of an inherent discount to coaching the Lakers because it raises your awareness elsewhere whenever it is that you leave.

And I just I'm finding out and I think the Lakers are finding out that that just is the wrong way to go about this. They lowballed Tyloo a few years back. He actually is on the record saying that he felt lowballed in that offer.

And here again, at the very least, whether you want to call it lowballing, lowball adjacent, whatever term you want to use for this. The Lakers, I think, thought that they could get this guy for a little bit less than the godfather offer because they're the Lakers. There's this sentiment around Lakers Twitter and Lakers fans of Lakers exceptionalism. And for a long time, essentially, the Lakers Lakers exceptionalism meant that the Lakers had opportunities afforded to them because they are the Lakers and because of past greatness and stuff like that. So Braun came to the Lakers as an example of that Lakers exceptionalism and where I think it can kind of become a negative or a pejorative term is in cases like this with the Lakers, where they think they are exceptional because they are the Lakers.

Whereas, you know, with Dr. Bus, they were held to an exceptional standard because you work for the Lakers. And I think this offer, the one to Ty Lue before and then just their general sentiment towards coaching, it kind of screams to me of that negative version of Lakers exceptionalism.

My question is, when do they learn? Because I was right when you said Ty Lue, I was about to bring that up because they right. They wanted to give him a three year deal. He wanted a four year deal. It didn't happen.

If that would have went down, they're never in this mess to begin with. And now with Dan Hurley, like, yeah, you could make it out to be that $70 million over six years is a fair offer a guy that's ever coached the NBA. But I thought that number needed to be 13 to $16 million a season when Kentucky offered him $11 million a season.

He said no. And the Lakers just go $11.7 million a season. So will they ever learn it will continue to just be the arrogance of, hey, we're the Lakers and people should want to be with us. And if they're not, we'll find the way to eventually make them regret it. Yeah, I learning usually comes through accountability, right? Like we as kids learn that we shouldn't climb up the side of our bed or the wrong side of our bed because gravity teaches us.

Okay, that was dumb. And with Rob Polinka, he's never held accountable. He's Teflon. He can make whatever series of mistakes that he wants. And he knows that he could just go to Jeannie and say, oh, Dan Hurley just didn't understand what it meant to be a Laker.

And then Jeannie will buy it. So I don't know that they'll learn. They made the same mistake with Ty.

They come right back. They make the same mistake again. It's the same leadership.

It's the same group of people who are making all these decisions. It would indicate to me that there is no learning process here unless, you know, minority owners start kind of asking some tough questions of Jeannie where it starts where she starts facing some accountability from shareholders of the Lakers who were saying, hey, we have watched the Golden State Warriors leapfrog us in terms of franchise value. We have watched the Clippers leapfrog us in terms of franchise value. We're just kind of stuck in this place right now and we're seen as cheap. And now it's now publicly out there that we made a cheap offer to somebody that we were looking at as the central identity to our organization moving forward.

And now it's really out there that we're cheap. So like that's not going to help our our standing with those evaluations either. I don't know that you'll see any real accountability or any real change or learning process until it's Jeannie with her feet to the fire. Anthony Irwin here with us is great job Lakers reporter for Lakers Daily, also the host of Odyssey's Lakers Lounge. Here's the multimillion dollar question. Who do you think right now is going to be the next coach of the Los Angeles Lakers with it not being Danny Hurley?

Man, I could be you. I do have a media career and I'm less arrogant than J.J. Redick, so maybe. But no, I I would say if I had had a gun to my head, I would say it's between Borrego and Cassell. Borrego's name has come up basically throughout this entire process as kind of that Frank Vogel safety valve break glass in case of emergency type of candidate. Problem there, though, is that he is interested and is a leading candidate for the Cleveland Cavaliers job. So the Lakers have some competition there. I can't believe that the Cleveland Cavaliers are competition. They're seen as competition to hire a head coach against the Lakers.

So they're really a sign of the times. And then with Cassell, right. He has the opportunity to move up the bench there in Boston with Charles Lee going to Charlotte. Boston looks like they're about to win a championship. So maybe he'll get a promotion that way as well. So I don't think he'll be as cheap as maybe the Lakers are hoping.

But the one thing is, is for sure here in terms of their options right now. You mentioned JJ Redick. It's not nearly as simple as, well, that didn't work out with Dan. Let's go back to JJ. I've heard that he has called on the Lakers and I've heard that the Lakers during the process leading up to Dan Hurley had somewhat called on on JJ.

That those conversations would have to be productive to get back to where things felt before all of this Dan Hurley mess. It'd be one thing if the Lakers have called on JJ. Why is JJ called on the Lakers? Just because like this guy hasn't been a head coach in the NBA. He should be fortunate that they're maybe interested in him.

That doesn't make sense to me. But it goes back to the arrogance of JJ Redick, if that's true. I think there's there's there's certainly ego at play there. He's he he's a Duke guy.

He for a long time, he was the Duke guy. Right. Like that screams that screams ego and arrogance. Like that's just like it's built into the fibers of that university and the players that come from it. But I my answer is like, why would JJ feel cool on the Lakers?

We have waves generally at everything. You know, it's just kind of a mess over there right now. You have too many rambuses involved.

Rob Palink is never going to face accountability. Eric Pinkus just wrote up a great piece for Bleacher Report talking about the ways that the Lakers don't spend compared to other other teams. So you have a coach. Whoever takes this job is going to be walking into an extremely volatile situation where you have two years to wow everybody.

And even if you wow people in those two years, there's a chance you're going to lose your job. Frank Bogle won a championship. He's gone. Darvin Ham got to the Western Conference, won more games the following season.

He's also gone. So like the the I think it's more I don't know if it's like JJ has his soured on the notion of coaching. I think it's just that the Lakers are such a mess right now.

The JJ Redick being the smart guy that he is. He's he he could always go back to ESPN. And the longer that he says smart things on ESPN's airwaves, he's going to keep on getting opportunities and a better one is probably going to come along than the Lakers currently right now. Two more for Anthony Irwin joins us right now on the Infinity Sports Network. It is the Zach Gelb show the future.

Actually, before we get to the future, LeBron James. Why was Darvin Ham let go? And if the Lakers knew the search is going to play out this way, do you think they just would not have got rid of Darvin Ham to begin with?

That's a great question. It's one that I've been going back and forth on a bunch. I think things had gotten pretty untenable in that locker room between Darvin and the players all year. I was doing a bunch of reporting on basically a situation that was getting worse and worse and worse. The reports, as the Lakers were looking for a head coach, is that they were looking for somebody who is really prepared, communicates well, holds players accountable. Essentially reading between the lines there, they're saying that Darvin Ham was ill prepared for communicator, didn't hold guys accountable in the way that the Lakers wanted him to in the way that the guys wanted to do. There there are a lot of things that you hear from that locker room where everybody was just kind of waiting for him to stop doing the whole run harder.

You know, try, try faster, all of those things like grit, grittier, those things. You know, they they're OK for a little while. But eventually when you start to see that your coach is kind of outmatched on a nightly basis, you lose the locker room. And I think that that's what happened there. Now, in terms of whether the Lakers, given how all of this played out, would have just kept Darvin. I want to say no, because it says it would indicate to what's that? It says in the embarrassment, at least, you know, it's been embarrassing what happened. But it's also like it would just be a different version of embarrassment.

You know, it would it would speak to poor process, you know. So I would I want to say no, that that they would still have probably hired or fired Darvin because things had gotten so untenable there. But you're absolutely right to prove that all this process has done is put in bright gold letters that the Lakers, who were once this vaunted, prestigious organization, the show about them was called Winning Time, is now cheap.

Yeah, they're they're gold plated. Lastly, I'll ask you, Anthony, when I led the show talking and I've said this before that LeBron, I fully expect him to be back with the Lakers next season, but he should leave and he should go somewhere else. However many more years he's going to play to try to go win a championship, one more championship. I know he responded on Twitter yesterday, this notion that he doesn't want to win anymore.

And he like laughed at that. But like he should leave. Right.

But no one thinks he will. Is that kind of your view as well? I mean, he could take his co-host device. His co-host looked at what the Lakers are doing is like, yeah, I think I'm good as it stands right now.

That is. But but like I I've I've thought about this a lot, too, where if the focus for LeBron James is winning a championship, it's not like even even set the Lakers aside. It's not in the Western Conference. You see what like Dallas had to go through to get to just to even have the opportunity to play Boston in the finals in the conference next year. I know he won't go back to Miami, but Miami could be in play. The Knicks, the Sixers, the Sixers would be sensational for him. Yeah, Philly. Yeah. Any any, you know, Cleveland.

Think about it. Anthony Davis is an injured big man. Joel Embiid is a better injured big man. And you already have the other piece there in Maxie, who the Lakers are trying to get another piece this year. I think Philly would be perfect for him. And we know that Daryl Morey is going to pull out all the stops to try to convince LeBron. So I heading into this offseason, I would have said LeBron leaving is completely off the table. There is zero chance whatsoever that he was going to leave this like last 48 hours or so is the first time that I've thought to myself that, yeah, he he could. If not, should you know, I obviously I've you learn things like never meet your heroes, never cover your favorite franchise because you learn things about them.

You find out how you find out how the sausage is made and you're like, yeah, this is this is. I think I'll wait for the salad. The other name that gets thrown out there for coaching this team and I laugh at it. Jay Wright, like if the Lakers called Jay Wright, how quickly do you think he hangs up the phone and says no thanks? I don't think he would insult them, but I certainly think he loves doing TV. He loves that, you know, he did his time, he did his winning and he exits the sport looking like an absolute genius. And and, you know, now he gets to just sit there and analyze everybody else who were fighting for their lives and in this industry.

I think once you kind of once you lose that desire for the competition, it's over for you. You know, so maybe the Lakers make some kind of crazy offer or whatever. But I'd be pretty surprised if Jay Wright leaves television from everything that you hear.

He loves it there too much. He's the host of Odyssey's Lakers Lounge, also Lakers reporter for Lakers Daily. He's Anthony Irwin. Anthony, good deal. Appreciate you doing this. Thank you guys for having me.

App to start listening. Come to get 20 percent off your order now. Start your summer road trip at Midas and get up to 30 dollars off your next repair service. Plus, get a free Closer Look vehicle check to make sure your road trip ready. So if you need a break service and alignment check or tune up, hit up Midas for up to 30 dollars off. For more details, request your appointment at Midas.com