Just after this season's NBA Finals, the teams began to get restless again. In addition to the Clippers poaching senior basketball advisor Jeff Van Gundy from championship team Celtics, the Pistons' dismissal of their head coach Monty Williams was definitely enough to shake the entire league. Because before the start of this season, they had just agreed to a six-year, $78.5 million contract with Monty. The contract also comes with a seventh/eighth-year team option and a maximum salary of $100 million. This means that if Monty lies at home and rests next, he will receive a total of $78.5 million in pre-tax wages for only one year. Refusing to pay a maximum salary, goodbye to the Lakers, the Purple and Gold are shy in their pockets, and James is powerless to change the situation.
Many people will laugh at the Pistons, calling them "stupid people with a lot of money", but the same thing happened to the Suns, Frank Vogel signed a five-year contract, he was fired after just one year of coaching, and the next four years of the contract were guaranteed for nothing (in the absence of new signings). However, when you think about the incomprehensible behavior of one team after another in the league (signing a big contract with a head coach and firing them after a year in charge at a high cost), think about it, this kind of spending tens of millions of dollars over 4-5 years is nothing to an NBA owner, and the coach's salary does not count towards the salary cap and does not incur a luxury tax.
On the contrary, looking back, the decisiveness of the Suns and Pistons' top management can see the helplessness of the Lakers. After the Pistons fired Monty, NBA reporter Kavatzski complained about the Lakers, saying that Monty's income for the next five years is similar to Hurley's acceptance of the Lakers' head coach. Of course, fans can ridicule the failure of the Pistons to sign, and they can also complain that they are stupid and have a lot of money, but it is also true that the Lakers have no money and no sincerity in choosing a coach. Their previous coach Hamm had a contract of only 4 years and 14 million, and the salary of the 4 years did not add up to the maximum salary of the coach for more than a year. And the Lakers let Ham coach for two full seasons before letting him go, and even though the Lakers failed in such a chaotic regular season this season, management kept Ham.
In terms of Hurley's pursuit, when NBA reporters reported, they used "a very lucrative contract" to describe the Lakers' offer to Hurley, and NBA reporter Shams even revealed that Pelinka was ready to prepare an eight-year, $100 million contract for Hurley. But in the end, they just offered Hurley a six-year, $70 million contract. First of all, it's true that NCAA coaches are hard to dig in their own right. Because coaches have more power in college, they don't need to face these billionaires in the NBA, the players are more obedient, and the team listens to the coach. Secondly, there is little attention in college, and not every game or even every round and details will be taken to watch under a magnifying glass, even if the grades are not good, there will not be too much pressure.
And the NBA, especially the Lakers, knows how much pressure they have on their coach position. In addition, I only play 30-35 games in a college season, which is less work, and the coach is usually close to home. The NBA has to play 82 games in the regular season alone, plus a variety of training, the intensity of work can be imagined. Looking back at the Lakers' six-year $70 million offer from these perspectives, it's simply not worth mentioning. This offer is indeed 20 million more than the six-year 50 million that Kangda gave to Hurley, but the six years add up to at least 300 more games in the NBA (50 more games per year in the NBA, even in the regular season).
And the Lakers' California tax is particularly exaggerated, coupled with the bonus from ConnectnUC to win the championship, the income gap between the two contracts is not so obvious. Looking at it this way, Hurley really doesn't have any reason to leave UConn and join the Lakers. In retrospect, the Lakers' offer is not actually aggressive. Let's take a look at the contract given by the Pistons to Monty, the salary of the top coaches in the NBA at that time was between 8 million and 10 million, and the Pistons directly broke the salary poaching of Monty in the coaching industry. By that standard, the salary of a top-paid coach is now between $14 million (Tyronn Lue) and $17.5 million (Kerr), and if the Lakers break the standard, they may be able to offer something like a six-year, $100 million contract.
But in the end, the average annual salary of the contract given by the Lakers is not even 12 million, and it does not even reach the top salary level of the current NBA coach. Their offer doesn't have much to do with aggressiveness. To put it mildly, the Lakers didn't even have any sincerity, and Hurley also said afterwards that when he communicated with the Lakers in Los Angeles, James personally sent him a text message, and the Lakers superstar expressed his support for Hurley. It can be seen that James admires Hurley very much, and he has previously praised the latter on social platforms. But helplessly, James's initiative did not change Hurley's mind, and the Lakers' offer was quite average.