As losses have piled up for the Lakers, rumors are swirling that head coach Darvin Ham is on the hot seat.
Whether or not Ham can save his job remains to be seen. Last season, LA had a 14-21 record through 35 games before using the trade deadline to shake things up and make a run to the Western Conference Finals. This year, the Lakers are 17-18 through 35 games but morale seems to be much lower as the franchise is in search of answers.
If Ham were to lose his job, the sense of urgency to find a suitable replacement would be incredibly high. Is the answer already on the coaching staff? Is the answer somewhere else in the locker room? Could LeBron James take a note from the books of Bill Russell and Lenny Wilkens to double as a player and coach?
While James is one of the smartest players to ever grace the NBA, here’s why you shouldn’t expect him to fill in at a coaching capacity for this Lakers team.
Can LeBron James coach the Lakers?
LeBron James cannot be hired as player-coach of the Lakers.
While Hall of Famers like Russell, Wilkens, Bob Cousy and Dave Cowens served as player-coaches during their respective careers, the NBA enforced rules prohibiting player-coaches when the salary cap was instituted 40 years ago.
Because there is no cap on a head coach’s salary, a franchise’s decision to pay a player more money to double as a coach would be viewed as cap circumvention. The most recent example of this came ahead of the 2004-05 season when Avery Johnson was reportedly nudged to retire as a player to become Don Nelson’s lead assistant coach with the Mavericks.
According to the 2004 report from Marc Stein, Dallas intended on Johnson to serve as an assistant coach that would only suit up in the case of extreme emergency but the league had “apparent contractual objections over Dallas’ plans to keep Johnson on its active roster as a player-coach.”
Johnson would step in as the head coach of the Mavericks with 18 games remaining in the 2004-05 season and stand in the position through the 2007-08 campaign.
While James has a brilliant basketball mind and is often viewed as a coach on the floor — and sometimes in the huddle — he’s not indicated that he would want to be an NBA head coach.
Whether he wants to or not, NBA rules will stand in the way of James taking the reins in Los Angeles any time soon.
