Despite his baby-faced look, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel has spent multiple decades on NBA sidelines. Dating back to 2001, Vogel has been both an assistant and head coach across the NBA landscape, and largely in the Eastern Conference.
That makes him acutely familiar with a player like Russell Westbrook, whose career started in 2008. And while he’s mostly done so from afar, Vogel has seen Westbrook’s progression and coached against it throughout his career, watching him ascend to the highest peak as the league’s MVP.
It’s that experience coaching against Westbrook that makes Vogel most excited about being on the Lakers this season, as he revealed in a recent interview with Nick Hamilton of Nitecast Media.