Stephen A. Smith explains why the Lakers' contract talks with Tyronn Lue fell apart and where it leaves their head coaching search going forward. (1:29) Negotiations between the Los Angeles Lakers and Tyronn Lue have ended without an agreement to make him the franchise's next head coach, league sources told ESPN. Lue and his representatives turned down the Lakers' offer Tuesday, league sources said. The Lakers then on Wednesday offered Lue a deal in the range of three years and $18 million, after which Lue's side pulled out of negotiations. According to the sources, Lue's camp was seeking a five-year deal with a salary commensurate with a championship résumé. Beyond an inability to agree on contractual terms, the Lakers had proposed several scenarios involving their preferred candidates for assistant coaches, including Jason Kidd, sources said. The Cleveland Cavaliers still owe Lue more than $10 million on his contract payout, and accepting a less-than-market-value deal from the Lakers could ultimately cost him money. Several days of discussions culminated Wednesday without an agreement that will reunite Lue and LeBron James, a partnership that delivered Cleveland the NBA championship in 2016. Lue was a preferred choice of James, but Lue's championship history as a Lakers player -- coupled with his successful run as Cavaliers coach -- also played a strong role in the Lakers offering him the job. Lakers adviser Kurt Rambis has assumed an increasingly powerful voice in basketball operations and has played a central role in the coaching search, league sources told ESPN. His wife, Linda, works closely with team owner Jeanie Buss. Rambis and general manager Rob Pelinka had interviewed Kidd for the head-coaching position, and they became convinced Kidd should be a key member of a Lue coaching staff, league sources said. They believed Kidd could be impactful with point guard Lonzo Ball, and they were impressed with the Milwaukee Bucks' player development during Kidd's tenure there. It isn't believed that Lue had objections to Kidd joining his staff, but the two had not discussed the possibility directly, league sources said.<doc-sep>Photo : Hannah Foslien ( Getty The Lakers reportedly went through a bizarre and even troubling process to arrive at this moment in the search for their next head coach—the moment when they sit at a table and hammer out a deal with Tyronn Lue, backed by the full support of everyone in the organization. Part of that process, as reported by Marc Stein of the New York Times, involved the deeply weird strategy of letting the other finalist for the position, Monty Williams, get hired away by the Phoenix Suns, in order to silence his supporters inside the Lakers organization. Advertisement That could be seen as a gamble, unless the work of reaching an agreement with Lue is more or less a simple formality, a matter of crossing T’ s and dotting I’ s. Which, it turns out, appears not to have been the case: Woj and Stein both reported Wednesday that the breakdown in negotiations comes down to the Lakers trying to dictate their choices for assistant coaches to Lue, and Lue seeking some degree of autonomy to select his own guys. According to Woj, Lue balked at the idea of adding former Bucks and Nets head coach Jason Kidd to his staff, but general manager Rob Pelinka and, uhh, advisor Kurt Rambis remain “convinced that he should be a key member of a Lue coaching staff.” ESPN’s Dave McMenamin says the disagreement also has to do with salary and security: Taken together, it sounds like the Lakers and Lue haven’t been all that close to a deal! Either way, Woj says the Lakers, having declined to make an offer to one of their two finalists and then evidently blown negotiations with the other, will continue their search for someone, anyone to replace the fired Luke Walton. I look forward to the Lakers opening the 2019–2020 NBA season with Larry Drew as their head coach. UPDATE: My god.<doc-sep>The Los Angeles Lakers unpredictably saw their contract negotiations with Tyronn Lue to be their next head coach flame out in ugly and public fashion on Wednesday evening, and over the course of the night we’ve started to get a sense of why. There are reports that the Lakers lowballed Lue with an offer of three years and $18 million, money that would not have done much to go over the guaranteed money he has left from the Cleveland Cavaliers, guaranteed cash that would be offset by accepting another head coaching job. We also know that the team tried to get him to take on Jason Kidd as an assistant coach, something he was not amenable to for reasons that are fairly obvious. But now, via Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, we may know the biggest reason why negotiations with Lue broke down. It was less about the yearly money the Lakers were offering Lue, and more about the impression they were leaving — that they didn’t think he had any other options, and only saw him as a coach for LeBron James: Negotiations really deteriorated w/ Ty Lue when the Lakers refused to offer more than a three year deal that was designed to line up with LeBron James’ contract. Lue felt insulted the Lakers only saw him as a coach for LeBron, sources close to the process told ESPN. — Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) May 9, 2019 One league source said it appeared that Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka never expected negotiations could fall apart as they did because Lue didn’t have other offers. Lue was seeking a 5-year deal, believing his championship experience commanded it. — Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) May 9, 2019 It’s pretty easy to see why Lue would be miffed about this. It’s not clear what type of offset he has in his contract with the Cavaliers, but even if getting hired by the Lakers only offset, say, 70 percent of the over $10 million he reportedly has remaining on his Cavs contract, that’s still upwards of $7 million he could be getting to not work that he’d be giving up to work. I don’t know about you, but it would take a lot more than $11 million to get me to not choose to stay unemployed and get $10 million anyway, and that’s assuming Lue wouldn’t have to give even more than 70 percent back were he to take another gig. Then there is the matter of pride. Everyone in professional sports has it, and Lue is surely no different. The Lakers essentially telling him with that deal length that they want to be able to hire a non-LeBron coach once James is gone is something of a proverbial middle finger, and probably implied to him that they don’t think all that highly of Lue as a coach in general. And that’s without mentioning that he clearly sees himself as more financially valuable than the Lakers do. We’ll surely continue to get details in the coming days over why and how this got so messed up, but regardless of what you think of Lue as a head coach or how big of a loss this is, the last thing this new and inexperienced front office regime needed heading into free agency was another circus dealing a hit to their perception league-wide, but with how badly this Lue thing has gone, that’s exactly what they’re getting. For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.<doc-sep>Former Magic coach Frank Vogel is set to interview with the Lakers on Thursday for the team's vacant head coaching position, according to the Los Angeles Times. The meeting comes after the Lakers and Tyronn Lue ended contract negotiations. It was reported that Lue was seeking a five-year deal and declined a three-year, $18 million deal. Lue recently served as head coach of the Cavaliers, who fired him following an 0–6 start at the beginning of the 2018-19 season. Vogel, 45, most recently coached the Magic but was fired in 2018 after two seasons with the franchise. He went to Orlando after spending five-plus seasons as the head coach of the Pacers. Vogel led Indiana to the playoffs in five of those six seasons, including in 2011, when he took over as interim coach. The Lakers recently added Lionel Hollins and Mike Woodson as coaching candidates to their search, per The Athletic's Shams Charania. On Wednesday, Tania Ganguli of the L.A. Times reported that Juwan Howard and Jason Kidd are still being considered for Los Angeles' open position. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com reported the Lakers were trying to put Kidd on Lue's potential coaching staff as an assistant. Bill Oram of The Athletic reports the team tried to do something similar with former coach Luke Walton and wanted Kurt Rambis added to his crew of assistants. The Lakers have been searching for a new head coach since firing Walton at the end of the 2018-19 regular season. Walton led the Lakers to a 37–45 record this season, missing the playoffs for the sixth-straight season.<doc-sep>
The Los Angeles Lakers will not make Tyronn Lue their next head coach, according to a report from Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times. Per Ganguli, the Lakers "determined he isn't the right long-term fit for the organization." This news comes just a short time after multiple reports about the two sides struggling to finalize contract negotiations. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the two sides reached an impasse in their negotiations on a deal. While Wojnarowski's report was a little vague, Marc Stein of the New York Times went into greater detail, clarifying that Lue didn't like the idea of the Lakers choosing his assistant coaches for him. Before these latest reports, it had seemed as if Lue and the Lakers would reach an agreement in no time. Chris Haynes previously reported on Monday evening that Lue had not yet accepted the job, but the two sides were in contract talks and working towards an agreement. Via Yahoo Sports: The Los Angeles Lakers and Tyronn Lue are in the process of working on a contract agreement that would make Lue the franchise's next head coach, league sources told Yahoo Sports.‬ Lue, 42, has not accepted the position yet as both sides continue to focus on contractual parameters, sources said.‬ ‪If Lue takes the job, Frank Vogel — former coach of the Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic — could join his staff as a lead assistant, sources said. ‬ The Lakers have been looking for a new coach for the last few weeks after parting ways with Luke Walton following the conclusion of the regular season. Walton spent all season in what was essentially a lame duck position, with rumors swirling for months about who the Lakers would hire in the offseason despite the fact that he was coaching the team. But even with Magic Johnson's surprise departure at the end of the season, the Lakers still went through with the decision to get rid of Walton. Since then, there's been a number of names linked to the job, including Monty Williams, who just took the Phoenix Suns job. The Lakers had seemed dead set on hiring Lue, which came as little surprise. Lue, of course, coached LeBron James for multiple seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and was in charge when they stunned the Golden State Warriors by coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals. In many ways, it seemed inevitable that Lue would join the Lakers due to that relationship, even if some in the Lakers' front office were reportedly wary of hiring Lue for that very reason. Now, the Lakers will continue on with their search as they, reportedly, move in a different direction from the man many thought would be the top candidate for the position at this juncture.