Lakers coach Luke Walton was driving to breakfast when he found out that Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak – the two men who hired him – had been fired.
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Walton got the unsettling news on Tuesday, Feb. 21, the same day the rest of the NBA world also heard that Lakers president Jeanie Buss had relieved executive vice president of basketball operations Jim Buss (her brother) and GM Kupchak of their duties and put Magic Johnson in charge of the team’s basketball operations. Johnson has since hired Rob Pelinka, a former player agent, as GM.
“I was driving to breakfast,” Walton told USA Today. “And yeah, I was surprised. We had a meeting scheduled with all four of us (Walton, Jim, Kupchak and Johnson), and I was going to breakfast before the morning and then my phone started blowing up, so I came in.”
The move by Jeannie Buss wasn’t a total shock to pro hoops observers. The Lakers have been struggling on the basketball court the last several years under the guidance of Jim Buss and Kupchak.
Walton, though, didn’t see it coming.
“Honestly, it wasn’t ever clear to me (that Jim and Kupchak would be on their way out) because when I interviewed that was one of the questions I asked, was ‘Are we going to be in this together?’ And they said ‘Yeah,’ so I was under the assumption that (it was) Jimmy and Mitch. So I wasn’t worried about this or that. I was expecting that that was the front office, the whole time I was going to be here, at least for a while, so there wasn’t any uncertainty with me.”
The news was unsettling to Walton for obvious reasons. When a new regime takes over a sports franchise, it often brings in a new coach.
Working in Walton’s favor is a solid rapport with Jeannie Buss, something she didn’t have with Walton’s predecessors Mike D’Antoni and Byron Scott, USA Today notes.
But Walton is just getting to know his new direct boss, Magic Johnson. When he was Lakers player, Walton occasionally intersected with Magic.
"It was not a really deep relationship or anything like that,” he said.
For now, Walton is keeping to task.
“This is an incredible opportunity,” he said. “We get the opportunity to try and rebuild and get the Lakers back on top, (and) yeah I get really frustrated with losing. It’s tough to sleep at night, but by the time I wake up in the morning, I’m normally very positive and excited driving into work about what we get to do for the day. That’s kind of the approach I take going into it.”