Lakers hire Mike D’Antoni as head coach

“Hang in there,” he said. “I have real close friends that were Lakers fans, and they were disappointed I got the job.”

Hopefully, for his sake, he can prove even his closest friends wrong.

So, there will need to be adjustments. D’Antoni may be the most dogmatic head coach of the last 10 years, but he’s smart enough to at least know that. In particular, I see four major areas where D’Antoni can (and will) meet his team halfway.

Felton and Gallinari are setting up a pick and roll here, but watch how Gallinari immediately slips the screen as soon as the primary defender jumps out. That forces Bibby to switch onto Gallinari, and the post isolation is just two quick passes away.

Jackson released a statement to Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times stating: “I did convey to them that I had the confidence that I could do the job.”

Jackson’s agent Brian Musburger said they were stunned -- not so much about the decision, but how Jackson learned of it.

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said that “Mike was the right person at this time to lead the Lakers forward.”

Kupchak cited the make-up of the roster and D’Antoni’s style of play as reasons for his hiring.

Los Angeles Lakers new head coach Mike D’Antoni was shocked to find out that he got the job over Phil Jackson, according to Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.

After reports that the Lakers’ vacant head coaching position was Jackson’s to turn down, everyone assumed that we’d be hearing news of Jackson’s hiring on Monday morning. Everyone including D’Antoni.

1. Sitting on one end of his bed with one sock on and the other sock in his hand

2. Struggling with the damn juicer, man, why’s it so complicated

Because they’re inconsiderate like that, the Lakers couldn’t even wait for the release of the new “Bomani & Jones” before hiring Mike D’Antoni. They also didn’t consider the possibility that, you know, a whole lot could still go wrong hiring a coach who has a lesser record than his predecessor.

That’s great for us, because that means you still might want to hear some of our suggestions for the Lakers. Seeing how Phil Jackson turned them down, they may as well have taken the coaching search all the way out of the box. Hey, if you’ll fire your head coach after five games, how much crazier would it be to hire an explorer? Maybe a music producer? Or maybe the guy behind the Lakers’ Princeton offense ... who somehow hasn’t been fired yet?

On paper, the L.A. Lakers’ decision to hire Mike D’Antoni makes perfect sense. Even in comparison to Phil Jackson, it might be a better move for the franchise’s extended health. With the Zen Master, you really never know when his last game will come -- he’d be on re-retirement watch from Day 1. And as we saw at the end of the 2010-11 season, there are no title guarantees, especially if he gets tired and less motivated to tweak his stars to the max.

D’Antoni is beloved by Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant, knows how to make an athletic big man shine and has the right sort of flair for an L.A. crowd hungry for electricity. But there are still a few ways in which this could go wrong and leave the Lakers short of the only thing that matters this year: a championship.

The Lakers spent the entire weekend flirting with Phil Jackson, and come Monday morning they made it official. The Lakers are hiring... Mike D’Antoni? If the news caught most of the basketball world off guard, you can include Phil Jackson in that group, as well.

As ESPN’s Ramona Shelbourne and Chris Broussard report, Jackson was “stunned” when the Lakers informed him that they’d chosen to hire D’Antoni. He was under the impression that the L.A. job was his to turn down before anyone else accepts. Apparently not.

While most of the East Coast was fast asleep, Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times broke this story late Sunday night.

Kobe’s history with his new coach is one of the more intriguing sub-plots of this story. It goes back all the way to his days as a kid in Italy, where he grew up watching a young D’Antoni star for Milan.