Report: Lakers expected to interview James Borrego, Chris Quinn in ‘initial wave’ of coaching search

The Lakers look set to begin their first set of interviews for their next head coach with James Borrego and Chris Quinn among the early candidates.

As the Lakers look set to finally begin the interview process for their head coach search, names will start surfacing. Without an obvious direction, the candidates that the team interviews will provide some insight into what way the Lakers are moving with this coaching search.

On Monday, Dave McMenamin of ESPN reported some names the team looks set to interview as part of their “initial wave” — more on that shortly — of interviews.

That initial interview list is expected to include assistant candidates such as Miami’s Chris Quinn and New Orleans’ James Borrego among multiple others, sources said.

Quinn has been with the Heat since 2014 when he was hired as an assistant after one season at Northwestern as an assistant coach. On multiple occasions in 2022, Quinn stepped in as the interim head coach for Miami during various absences from Erik Spoelstra.

Borrego, meanwhile, is one of the few candidates on the market who was a former head coach. Currently an assistant with the Pelicans, Borrego served as head coach of the Hornets for four seasons, including two seasons with LaMelo Ball on the team.

It was a mixed bag of results as the Hornets battled through injuries to reach the play-in game in back-to-back seasons, but were blown out in the 9-10 game in both appearances. After the second loss, Borrego was fired. After spending a year away from coaching, Borrego took an assistant coach role with New Orleans in June of 2023.

As mentioned, the duo are part of the initial wave of interviews, which McMenamin offered more insight on in his piece.

The search is expect to proceed in stages with this initial wave, then a period of talking to coaches with whom the Lakers have more history, and then a whittling down of the list to a final round of candidates, sources said.

Technically, there was some insight into what the Lakers are searching for in a head coach. But it didn’t provide any sort of clarity into their search.

In Pelinka’s conversations with officials across the league, the term “grinder” keeps coming up in the GM’s description of an important characteristic of the Lakers’ coach, sources said.

To borrow and slightly censor a phrase from an infamous Kobe Bryant commercial, “What the f--- does that mean, Rob Pelinka.”

It’s the perfect word to use to describe a coach because it makes zero sense. Oh, you want a grinder? Do you want them grinding tape? Grinding workouts? Grinding X’s and O’s? Do they need to never run from the grind? Should they always be grinding?

If I wanted to dive deeper, I don’t think the trait of being a “grinder” is what the Lakers lacked last season before falling out of the playoffs. Or maybe it was because that’s such a dumb phrase that I have no idea what it means.

Fortunately, in the coming days and weeks, we’ll start having more tangible things to discuss and ponder instead of which coaches are grinders and which aren’t.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.