According to an ESPN report, the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers are interested in hiring Tom Izzo as their new head coach.
ESPN's Ramona Shelburne and Brian Windhorst reported nine top candidates for the Lakers job, headlined by Warriors assistant and former Lakers player Luke Walton. Izzo joins fellow college coaches Kevin Ollie of the University of Connecticut, Jay Wright of Villanova University, Roy Williams of the University of North Carolina and John Calipari of University of Kentucky on the Lakers' shortlist, the report said.
The Lakers should start contacting candidates in the next few days, the report said.
In 2014, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Detroit Pistons considered Izzo as a candidate for head-coaching positions, before hiring Flip Saunders and Stan Van Gundy, respectively. In a press conference denying interest in the Timberwolves and Pistons jobs, Izzo mentioned the Lakers.
"If somebody made me an offer to be the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers that was so good that it would impress everybody, does that mean I would never say never?" Izzo said to ESPN in 2014. "I'm not doing that anymore. I've seen too many people get stung that way. ... Put it this way: I've got a big-time recruit coming in an hour and if I was leaving I wouldn't be recruiting.''
In terms of recruiting, Izzo's 2016-17 and 2017-18 classes have been some of his best ever. According to 247Sports, the Spartans' 2016 class is the fourth-best in the nation, with five-star recruits in Miles Bridges and Josh Langford and four-star players in Cassius Winston and Nick Ward.
The 2017 MSU basketball class does not yet have any commitments, but 247Sports reports the Spartans are targeting 22 players, including 15 top-100 recruits and five top-20 recruits.
The Lakers recently fired head coach Byron Scott after the worst season in franchise history. The storied franchise is in a rare rebuilding period. The Lakers are looking to build around young prospects D'Angelo Russell, a former Big Ten player at Ohio State, and Julius Randle, a former Kentucky star.
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