In Defense of Frank Vogel

There’s a lot of noise regarding Frank Vogel’s job security at the moment. It’s probably grown louder following the Lakers’ 13-point loss to the Ja Morant-less Grizzlies on Thursday, dropping them to an even .500 on the season through 26 games.

His seat might not be hot, but given the team he coaches and the expectations they have, it’s definitely growing warmer.

Which is stupid.

I’m not going to pretend I know exactly how good of a job Vogel has done from the sidelines this season. I don’t follow the Lakers that closely. And aside from the fact that it’s always difficult to tell where the influence of a coach ends and those of the players begin, I don’t need that insight, because it’s irrelevant.

Whatever questions there are about Vogel’s abilities to coach this team are no more than a branch that has stemmed from the root of the problem, which is the fact that this Lakers team is simply not well constructed. We’ve known that to be the case ever since they blew up a good chunk of their rotation to acquire Russell Westbrook on draft day, which set off a bunch of other decisions that could only make the best of the bad situation they created for themselves. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when the questions we all had about this team before the season have already reared their head.