The Los Angeles Lakers officially introduced head coach Frank Vogel with general manager Rob Pelinka sitting by his side on May 20.
Throughout the press conference, Vogel was saying all the right things about how he wants and plans for the 2019-20 Lakers to be successful.
Vogel continued his positivity tour by being highly complimentary of not only LeBron James, but the entirety of the team’s young core.
Now, with all that’s going on within the Lakers organization, it’s going to take a lot of good fortune to simply forget about the dysfunction currently plaguing owner Jeanie Buss and company. However, Pelinka and Vogel both had solid answers when asked about how to quiet all that outside noise.
“I think simply put, the best way to quiet the noise is to just do what the Lakers do and that’s to win and compete for banners,” Pelinka said at Vogel’s introductory press conferennce. “The noise will exist if you’re not doing that.”
“Last year, for many reasons, was a challenging year,” Pelinka stated in reference to the injuries and Anthony Davis trade rumors that killed any chance of success.
“I think instead of spending all of our focus looking backwards, we’re going to look forward. I think we have to learn from last year, and there are things that we learned. But I do think next year we will be a winning team. We’re going to all put in the work, with Frank’s coaching and leadership, and the front office, to make sure that’s the case. That’ll end the noise.”
Pelinka’s most important point is that when teams are winning, people don’t focus on any perceived problems on an organizational level. It’s only once the losing starts that those things become a storyline.
Vogel echoed this with an extremely succinct point about what the Lakers need to do. “Just win,” Vogel said.
And while this may not seem like enough, Vogel has been around both winning and losing organizations and it’s clear that winning games covers up a lot of the dysfunction.
The Lakers face an immensely important summer for multiple reasons but no matter what, if the product that gets put together can win games from October through June, people will likely forget about former president of basketball operations Magic Johnson’s resignation and the flawed head coaching search.
In sports, winning really does cure all and Pelinka and Vogel both know that’s what needs to happen as soon as possible.