The Lakers hired Mike D’Antoni.

He will be a far better coach than Mike Brown, who was driving the Lakers over a cliff. (Or abandoned the driver’s seat of the vehicle which subsequently was headed over a cliff. He never really seemed in charge, did he.)

I like Mike D’Antoni. I am convinced he is a very bright guy, having covered just enough Lakers-Suns games to have an opinion on him.

But Mike D’Antoni has one major problem, going forward with the Lakers.

He is not Phil Jackson.

I do not doubt the Lakers have a variety of reasons for choosing D’Antoni over Phil, with whom they had extended talks.

D’Antoni may be easier to control. He may not bring to the club the tension of being in a relationship with the owner’s daughter. Jim Buss, Jerry’s son, who apparently is running the Lakers these days, doesn’t have to worry about D’Antoni being the sort of larger-than-life character that Phil is.

But it was not Mike D’Antoni’s name that Lakers fans were chanting, at Staples Center. And for good reason; Phil has won 11 NBA championships as a coach, five of them with the Lakers; Mike D’Antoni has won zero. He hasn’t even reached the NBA Finals.

It also sets up a dynamic in which fans — and maybe Lakers players — will wonder “what would we have done with Phil?” if they fall short of a championship.

Whatever conditions Phil was asking — and Kurt Rambis insisted in an ESPN interview today that Phil was not asking to skip road trips — the Lakers should have met them.

(Though the public is still not completely clear on just how physically damaged Phil Jackson is. They see the Big Chair he sits in at games, but I’m not sure many of them have seen him walk down a hall. He is a mess. From NBA injuries. Arthritic, in pain, with very limited mobility. The last time I saw him, he was getting a ride in a golf court for the 50-yard trip from the Staples interview room to the Lakers locker room.)

Anyway. I believe the Lakers will go about as far with Mike D’Antoni as they would with Phil Jackson. D’Antoni may not be quite as clever as Phil is, but he and Steve Nash will get along wonderfully, and that will be a key to being competitive.

But if “as far as they go” is anything less than a championship, “It should have been Phil” will be the unofficial coda to the 2012-13 Lakers season.