Column: Lakers need to fire D'Antoni

Who would have thought that halfway through the NBA season the Los Angeles Lakers would be a mediocre, inconsistent, hollow shell of the championship team they were just three seasons ago?

At 17-25, 12th in the Western Conference, the Lakers’ playoff hopes are slowly diminishing.

How can this happen? The team has 33 combined All-Star appearances between its starters and a two-time All-Star in Antawn Jamison coming off the bench.

The answer is not in the players — it’s in the coaching.

Head Coach Mike D’Antoni, who was hired shortly after the Lakers fired Mike Brown through five games, has gone 12-19 since taking over.

With the type of talent he has, this is an unacceptable benchmark.

The first half of D’Antoni’s tenure with L.A. was filled with criticism over Dwight Howard’s free throw percentage and a promise that the Lakers would be elite when Steve Nash came back from injury.

Since Nash came back, the team has continued to fall in the standings and recently went on their longest losing streak in almost a decade.

So the appropriate response for the Lakers is to fire D’Antoni and put all their chips into bringing back Phil Jackson.

When the Lakers were 1-4 and looking for a new coach, Jackson’s name was thrown into the ring. He was widely considered the favorite to land the job, but the Lakers went over his head and hired D’Antoni.

Despite the Lakers pulling that type of move, I believe Jackson still wants the job.
It’s just a matter of the Lakers admitting they made a mistake by bringing D’Antoni in.

The NHL’s New Jersey Devils had a similar situation two years ago when its head coach Jacques Lemaire retired.

They brought in John MacLean and assembled a star-studded lineup in time for the 2010-11 season.

But they got off to a pitiful start and fired MacLean a little before the halfway point and convinced Lemaire to come out of retirement and coach the team.

Because there was a familiarity and sense of respect for the coach in the locker room, the Devils turned its season around and got back into the playoff race.

Though the team ultimately missed the playoffs, it salvaged something out of it season and gave fans hope.

The difference between the 2010-11 Devils and this season’s Lakers is that the Devils dug themselves an inescapable hole that they could not climb out of.

L.A. is only three and a half games out of a playoff spot. The team is still in the running to sneak in as a seven or eight seed.

But L.A. has to act now.

There are too many good teams in the West and if they don’t start making their run now, it may never happen, and the Lakers could, dare I say it, miss the playoffs.

Phil Jackson may be the only ticket there, and they would be wise to pick up the phone and give him another call.

­— zstavis@indiana.edu