Lakers make changes to keep up with the times

Sam Amick | USA TODAY Sports

There was a time not so long ago when the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t have to discuss the inner workings of their storied franchise.

Championships have a funny way of giving teams that luxury, with fans and media too busy celebrating and chronicling the success to worry about anyone not named Magic, Shaq, or Kobe. But a .292 winning percentage over the course of two seasons has a funny way of changing things, and there was no better sign of this reality than the Lakers’ press release sent Friday that detailed a number of changes to the team’s front office.

After a season in which they were seen as an organization that is behind the times when it comes to analytics and modern-day strategy, the Lakers pulled the curtain back on their own operation while announcing their latest attempt to keep up with the NBA Joneses. The most significant move involved Clay Moser, a longtime coach and former Lakers scout who will fill the newly-created position of assistant coach/director of basketball strategy. Moser, along with assistant general manager Glenn Carraro, will act as a bridge between the team’s much-maligned analytics department and head coach Byron Scott’s staff.

The more revealing part of the release, however, was that the Lakers chose to shed some light on the analytics department that – amid all the losing of these past two disastrous seasons – has been heavily scrutinized. They introduced Director of Analytics Yuju Lee and Associate Director of Analytics Aaron Danielson, not only pointing out that they’ve been on board for a few years now (Lee since 2012 and Danielson since 2013) but that they come with the kinds of credentials that are so coveted by teams around the league these days (Lee has master's degrees in statistics and computer science from UCLA; Danielson has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago, a master’s in economics from NYU and is finishing his PhD in statistics at UCLA). And as if that wasn’t more than enough transparency for one day, Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak agreed to discuss the many changes with USA TODAY Sports.

To Kupchak’s credit, he knows the landscape has changed. Sure, he’d prefer to keep their business private and just keep telling their fanbase to trust them during these rebuilding years. But the Laker Nation’s faith is clearly waning, with many of them questioning the franchise’s leadership in the wake of Dr. Jerry Buss’ death in Feb. 2013.

There’s a unique dynamic in play here as well, a two-year timeline agreed upon by Lakers governor Jeanie Buss and her brother, executive vice president of basketball operations Jim Buss, by which changes will be made in the front office if – as Jeanie told USA TODAY Sports last October – the team isn’t contending for a title again by the end of the 2016-17 season. And so, it seems, everyone’s putting their cards on the table in the name of turning things around.

“I understand that (need to share more regarding their internal structure),” said Kupchak, who is entering his 16th season as general manager. “We’re going to be judged on the product and whether we win or lose, but the last couple of years, we’re not winning. And our goal is going to remain to win games. But we do have to, I feel, we have to show our fans that we’re doing everything we can to get back to that spot. If that means sharing these inner workings of the organization moreso than we ever did, then we have to do that.”

It’s hard not to see the open nature of this announcement as, at least in part, a reaction to the ESPN.com story in February that painted an unflattering pictures for the Lakers. To say nothing, of course, of Scott's comments regarding the three-point shot last season that were widely seen as archaic.

Nonetheless, Kupchak – who noted that former Lakers and Houston Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich and his son, Trey, are also part of the analytics staff – is clearly bullish on where the Lakers are now.

“The five people that we talked about who are in charge of accumulating, acquiring and interpreting the data, I feel they measure up to anybody in the league,” Kupchak said. “I would put them against anybody in the league … I would not hesitate to put our department in a debate with any other (analytics) department (of another team). I know that they would be great.”

There were other title changes, too, as Jesse Buss (fellow son of Jerry) was promoted to assistant general manager/director of scouting and Ryan West (son of Lakers great Jerry West) to director of player personnel. But by Kupchak’s own admission, the Moser move and the changes that come with it were the most substantive of the bunch.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that job descriptions are going to change a lot (for Jesse Buss and West), but to a large degree it’s a recognition of a job well done,” he said. “If you feel that you’ve got people who have worked hard and done a good job, you recognize them.

“Clay is a longtime basketball person, and over the years he has shown an inclination and a desire to get more and more involved in the analytical side of the business. So we felt that putting him in this position to be a link between our analytics department and our basketball staff could be a really good thing.

“Last year, it was (Lakers assistant coach) Mark Madsen, and in today’s world – with the amount of information that’s available and the demands on an assistant coach – one person couldn’t do it. Mark would be with our analytics people at six or seven in the morning, and then he’d have to race to a coach’s meeting at eight or 8:15. That’s not reflective of the amount of information that’s available today.”

The time may come again when their winning ways mean relative anonymity for the ones behind the scenes, but that time is most assuredly not now.