What went wrong? So much that couldn't be controlled. But leave it to the incomparable
Metta World Peace to put his finger right on the pulse of what could have been controlled -- what could have been done differently in a Lakers season that went so spectacularly wrong.
"At the end of the day, it has to be a collective effort and it has to jell; the system has to work for everybody," World Peace told CBS Sports Radio in an interview Saturday. "And you have to be the best team with the best coaches and the best players, and it has to make sense; it has to connect. For us, it just didn't connect. It wasn't [anybody's] fault. It just didn't happen.
"It's not necessarily about having the best names," he said. "It's about being the best team. So this year, I felt we had the most talent. It just wasn't translating and it didn't connect. We didn't connect with Coach Brown, and then Bernie [Bickerstaff] comes in we connect with Coach Bernie, and Coach D'Antoni comes in and it works for a little bit and then it doesn't work and then it works really well toward the end of the season. ... It's nobody's fault; it just didn't happen. We just did not connect."
"I feel like at times the Lakers did not let the coaches coach," World Peace said. "The players, we didn't let them do their job. So now you get the crowd's chanting, 'We want Phil, we want Phil,' and things like that, which is not a bad thing. But at the same time, you have to take some responsibility for the season. The fans can't blame Coach D'Antoni, can't blame Coach Brown for a season like this. It's a collective effort.
"Sometimes, we didn't let the coaches coach, and sometimes the coaches didn't coach," World Peace said. "So it goes both ways. Sometimes a coach can get in a tough situation where they respect these All-Stars so much that they don't want to rub people the wrong way. So sometimes I felt we should've been rubbed the wrong way. Sometimes I felt like Coach Brown could've rubbed us more the wrong way. Even Coach D'Antoni could've rubbed us the wrong way sometimes."
"You have to understand he is a great coach and you've got to respect the freedom sometimes that he's giving you and you've got to respect a guy's personality," World Peace said. "If a head coach has his own type of personality, you've got to respect that personality and can't ever take advantage of that personality.
"At times, a coach is trying to implement a system and at times we didn't let him implement his system," he continued. "And at times he wasn't that hard on us, so it goes both ways."
