Lakers employee leaves organization after dispute over coaching search coverage

Pete Zayas of the popular “Laker Film Room” series is leaving his role with the Los Angeles Lakers over a dispute about his characterization of the team’s pursuit of UConn head men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley this offseason.

After the Lakers’ communication staff presented Zayas with an ultimatum between continuing his podcast or leaving the organization, Zayas chose to return to independent coverage of LeBron James and Co.

Zayas later learned from Lakers HR that the decision resulted from his reference to the team’s pursuit of Hurley as a “saga.”

Zayas announced the news in an episode of the Laker Film Room podcast last week.

“If you listen to this podcast, you know that I delight in the Lakers being this unnecessarily dramatic mess. It’s part of the charm,” Zayas said. “I’m going to say 1,000 things this season that will be more offensive than that characterization, so it (was) more about, ‘we don’t want to have podcasts from Lakers employees.’ And that’s totally within their right.”

Zayas is a trailblazer in digital sports content after his breakdown videos on the league’s most popular team earned him a gig on the team’s digital content staff.

Since joining the Lakers in 2020 , Zayas created videos for the team’s social and digital channels while cohosting the LFR podcast with longtime partner Darius Soriano as well as Lakers digital reporter and Spectrum SportsNet sideline reporter Mike Trudell.

The Laker Film Room podcast is part of the Blue Wire network.

Zayas posted his first YouTube video covering the Lakers in 2017. He wrote about the Lakers and the NBA for The Athletic from late 2019 through the company’s big layoff sweep in June 2020, then joined the Lakers two weeks after leaving The Athletic.

“I loved working there,” Zayas said. “It became my dream job in a way where I haven’t worked with this many talented and compassionate people who are just really good at their jobs. That’s the thing I’m going to miss most.”

With this move, Zayas returns to the independent platforms where he first generated an audience.

[ Laker Film Room Podcast ]

The post Lakers employee leaves team after dispute over his podcast’s coaching search coverage appeared first on Awful Announcing .