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Usually, yes, and they very likely are good this year too. Chemistry is a very important thing, and when a team overhauls its personnel, sometimes it takes more than five games to develop. Yeah sometimes you can swap out Dez for Rollins, things click right away and you come out with Damaged, but just as easily shit can go pear-shaped and you end up with an Audioslave on your hands. Even so, when you add two superstars to a team that’s supposed to compete with the LeBron Jameses and Kevin Durants of the NBA, a 1-4 start can cause some people to panic. I know you might hear some people saying, “But hasn’t Steve Nash been out with a knee injury for the past three games? Do you we really expect this team to be clicking right now without him?” This is a tempered, rational response, and as such belongs nowhere near our contemporary sports media landscape, especially the wasteland of insanity that is Lakers Nation. And make no mistake, this is certainly a panic move, though that’s not to say it came without warning. There was a nationally televised, Hall-of-Fame caliber mean-mugging from Kobe towards Brown on Wednesday night. This was followed on Thursday by the Lakers’ owner offering a very public vote of confidence towards his coach and as we’ve learned, a public vote of confidence from your owner is the NBA front-office equivalent of “Who Shot Ya?”
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By all accounts, the man is an intensely focused sociopath, and I mean that in the most generous way. He’s always wanted to prove that he’s on the same level as Michael Jordan, and his window to do just that by winning a pile of championships is closing pretty quickly. He’s arguably the second or third most powerful figure in the Lakers organization, and yet Mike Brown was hired as head coach without his input. Now, am I saying that Kobe suggested over the summer to Mike Brown that they install the Princeton offense, an offense that has never seen any real success in the NBA, to foment early-season chaos and move up the ouster of the man Bryant never wanted as coach in the first place, thereby giving Kobe the opportunity to install a coach he does want? Well, I wasn't saying that, but now that I bring it up…Who might be the next Lakers coach?
Bernie Bickerstaff, the assistant coach, is running the show on Friday and the team is working on the interim coach stuff now, but they won't last. So here's your look at the guys who probably will get the job.

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