LA Lakers handing Byron Scott the keys to a broken-down car

Someday the Lakers will be good again. Given their history as a franchise and the seemingly inescapable pull of talent to Los Angeles, it probably won’t be too long before it happens, either.

It’s just not likely to happen with Byron Scott as coach.

Scott’s not a bad coach, although his most recent gig in Cleveland ended after three seasons of disappointment and a 64-166 cumulative record. The main problem for Scott is that Los Angeles brass have sent him on a fool’s errand.

The Lakers finished 27-55 last year, last in their division, second worst in the Western Conference and sixth worst in the entire NBA. They lost their best player from last season, Pau Gasol, to Chicago, and Jodie Meeks, their second best player, to Detroit. Their reinforcements include Kobe Bryant, 35 and coming off another serious injury that limited him to six games last year, and Carlos Boozer, at 32 a longtime defensive non-entity who’s coming off one of the worst offensive seasons of his career. Steve Nash is expected back too, but at 40 it is difficult to expect he will bring anything with him.

They also overpaid to keep Jordan Hill, a useful role player with questionable defence, and Nick Young, also a useful role player with even worse defence – who shoots way, way too much.

To be fair, they also made an astute signing on the cheap of Ed Davis, a solid forward, traded for Jeremy Lin, who can thrive in a supersub role and drafted Julius Randle, a genuinely exciting prospect. But all in all, the Lakers are an objectively bad collection of basketball talent.

This is the fire into which Byron Scott has been thrown. To his credit, the two-time NBA Finals coach with the Nets took over a Hornets team in an equally woeful situation in 2004/05 and had them in the play-offs by 2007/08. But the parallels are only instructive if you think Randle will turn out like Chris Paul, the Hall of Fame talent New Orleans selected with the fourth pick in 2005 and who was largely responsible for the rise of the Hornets under Scott.

Unfortunately for Scott, his Cleveland experience is probably more telling in this regard. LeBron James left the Cavaliers after the 2009/2010 season, Scott was subsequently hired to coach a team mostly devoid of talent and in three years he never could get them to approach respectability.

Scott understands one of the biggest immediate problems facing the Lakers, at least. Los Angeles had the fourth-worst point differential in the NBA last season, despite an offence that ranked 11th by points scored, thanks to the 109.2 points per game they surrendered. Now, they also hoisted the seventh-most field goal attempts per game, meaning some of that eye-popping points allowed total was a result of playing at a fast pace that inflated points totals on both sides.

But 109 is also a lot of points now matter how you slice it.

Scott is saying the right things about improving that, including telling ESPN LA that one of his first texts with Kobe concerned defence. "He told me he was working out with Wesley (Johnson) and Nick (Young)," Scott said. "I told them that sounded great, but they 'better be ready to play some defence'."

Nice as that is, however much Scott emphasises defence as a value or insists his players work on it, the fact is LA don’t have good defenders. Almost up and down the roster, from Nash to Boozer to a hobbled Bryant to Lin to Young to Hill, the Lakers are staffed by players who just aren’t good at defending.

If it didn’t seem like such a heartless thing to do to a franchise favourite who won three titles with LA in the 1980s, and if they hadn’t given him such a generous contract (four years, $17 million (Dh62.4m) according to ESPN LA), it would seem like LA had simply hired Scott, a known entity who’s been around the NBA a bit, because it would be easy to replace him with someone else when they were closer to being a realistic contender.

As it stands, it appears the Lakers genuinely hope he's their long-term coaching answer. Scott had better hope they're patient, that they really mean long-term, because it's going to be at least a few seasons before the Lakers resemble anything like the Los Angeles Lakers again.

In the meantime he can expect a lot of long nights, exasperating 120-105 results and the responsibility of trying to keep poor Kobe, a notorious competitor, from assaulting his teammates.

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