Frank Vogel has been a scapegoat for the Los Angeles Lakers organization from the day that he was hired three offseasons ago. 

It seemed as if it were yet another situation where LeBron James had one of his friends as the second in command ready to take over, when extraordinary expectations were not met. It had been seen before when LeBron returned to Cleveland, when the team started out slow in his second season back, David Blatt was fired very quickly into the season, despite leading the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals the season prior.

Now, let’s compare this to Vogel, who led the Lakers to a title in his first season as the coach, and then was on pace to lead the Lakers to a top-three seed in the Western Conference until key injuries derailed the season. Now in his third season, the Lakers are hovering around .500, once again seeing massive injuries. A key difference this year is that the Lakers roster is not the roster that should be contending for a top spot. Putting together the oldest team in the league that does not have a lot of great shooters in the rotation, is not putting your coach or your organization in a place to succeed. This is exactly what the Lakers front office has done, and now it is publicly known that Vogel is on a game to game basis for his job.

So why should all of this scare coaches away from the Lakers? For starters, the issues of roster composition do not fall on the shoulders of Vogel, they primarily fall onto general manager Rob Pelinka’s, yet Vogel gets all of the blame. Secondly, the star of the team, LeBron, known to criticize coaches he does not like, has defended Frank Vogel throughout his tenure in Los Angeles, and with many considering LeBron to be the greatest of all time, he knows a thing or two about coaches. A coach who has support from the players, has seen levels of success the team had not seen in years, and is not the main fault for the issues being the one under fire and coaching game by game for his job compiles why no coach should want the Lakers job.

Because institutionally, the Lakers organization is flawed from the top down, refusing to accept blame and place it on a scapegoat instead. And every single time in the NBA when the front office is as close as the Lakers is, the head coach will be the scapegoat. So unless a coach wants insecurities in day-to-day operations, the Lakers should struggle finding another coach of Vogel’s acumen if they make the wrong decision and fire him.