Shams Refuses To Go Down Without A Fight After It Looked Like Woj Completely Buried Him About The Lakers Head Coaching Job

I dunno about anyone else, but I have been thoroughly enjoying the Lakers Head Coaching search disaster. I think we can all agree it doesn't really matter who they hire in the grand scheme of things, so the real focus should instead be around our latest Shams vs Woj battle. It feels like it's been forever since we've had a true back and forth war between these two and I can't lie, it has me feeling a little nostalgic. Who doesn't love a good old fashion #SourceOff?

As you may remember, it all started when Shams came out and dropped the bomb that the JJ Redick was the frontrunner for the Lakers gig

It wasn't the first we'd heard of Redick being in the mix as Chris Haynes dropped that nugget the week before, but it was the first "report" that Redick was the frontrunner.

The Los Angeles Lakers are zeroing in on JJ Redick as the front-runner to be the franchise’s next head coach, league and media industry sources told The Athletic.

No final decision has been made yet, and the Lakers still have steps remaining in their head-coaching search process, league sources said. But the indications are strong that Redick is their leading choice at this stage.

The Lakers’ search has been seriously focused on two candidates — Redick and Pelicans associate head coach James Borrego — over the last couple of weeks, league sources said.

You'll notice there's a certain name missing from Shams reporting.

Enter Woj. 

The wording here was no accident. Shams saying that Redick is the leading candidate and has always been there #1 choice, Woj responds with

Hurley’s been at the forefront of the Lakers’ search from the beginning of the process, even while the organization has done its due diligence interviewing other candidates.

I mean that's as clear a shot by Woj as you could possibly get. We've seen enough of these #SourceOffs between these two to know what was going on here. As we know, Dan Hurley eventually turned the Lakers down, their search is even more of a disaster, and that's the end of this thing right?

Wrong.

You see, the coaching part may be over, but the media beef? That's still alive and well. I say that of course because today, Shams got up off the mat and came back swinging

Again, the word choice here matters. If you think that's an accident, you have not been paying attention to the years of beef between these two. Shams is basically suggesting that Woj is full of shit that Dan Hurley has been the focus for weeks and was the #1 choice, and honestly that makes a little bit of sense. If someone is your #1 choice, why are you wasting time meeting with other people first? Unless those meetings never happened, which I find a bit of a stretch, it does bring up a good point. 

Does any of this actually matter? No, of course not.

Is it very funny to watch unfold in real time? Yes, yes it is.

I don't think it's entirely out of the question to think that maybe Woj was doing Hurley a favor and pumping him up for this role as a way to leverage UConn into giving him more money. I feel like that happens all the time and is all part of the business. Hurley probably always knew he wasn't leaving and used the Lakers and Woj as leverage. Nothing wrong with that in my book. If you think that's what happened here, then Woj's word choice in his initial reporting is certainly interesting. He willingly discredited Shams' reporting for no reason other than spite. On some level, you have to respect that.

At the end of the day, these two need to just stop the #SourceOff and lace em up in the next Rough N' Rowdy. Let's just get it over with at this point. Taking shots on TV and through the media is fine and all, but there's obviously real bad blood between these two so let's give the people want they want and take this to the ring.