EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — The Los Angeles Lakers’ off-season officially began Monday when they parted ways with Coach Frank Vogel.

Vogel led the Lakers to the 2020 NBA championship in his first season but the team stumbled after that, going 42-30 with a first-round playoff knockout before sputtering to a 33-49 record in an uneven season that ended Sunday without a post-season appearance.

The Lakers staggered to the finish line, going 6-18 after the All-Star break as their defense surrendered a hard-to-overcome 121.8 points a game.

Vogel, 48, was known as a defensive-minded coach and rode the league’s third-rated defense to the franchise’s 17th championship two years ago. But the Lakers dropped to 21st in defensive rating this season and were pummeled in the paint and behind the arc.

It didn’t help that Anthony Davis missed half the season and LeBron James almost one-third of it because of injuries, as the Lakers failed to live up to championship expectations.

The bottom line was not a pretty one. The Lakers failed to even make the play-in tournament and finished a stunningly low 11th in the Western Conference.

Vogel was officially informed of the team’s decision Monday morning. He still had a year left on his contract.

“It was a point in the Lakers’ history where we felt like it was time for a change in our leadership voice,” said Rob Pelinka, Lakers vice president of basketball operations. “Those are difficult things to do, but Frank was grateful for the opportunity he had.”

Pelinka added that the Lakers would start a methodical coaching search that would not be wrapped up quickly, though he hoped informally to have it completed in time for the June 23 amateur draft. Two possible candidates — Utah’s Quin Snyder and Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers — are guiding teams in first-round playoff games that begin this weekend.

Pelinka seemed well aware of the Lakers’ unfulfilling season and called it “disappointing at every level.”

“The calculus for Lakers success is pretty binary. Either we win a championship or we don’t,” he said. “There’s no gold stars for being in between or there’s no ‘attaboys.’ This year, we failed in that mission.”

Pelinka vowed that the Lakers would “look under every stone” to see how they could improve next season. They are, however, limited in what they can do because they project to be too far over the salary cap.

They won’t have much purchasing power when free agency begins in July. In a league where the average salary is $9.5 million, the Lakers’ main spending tool will likely be a “mini mid-level exception” worth about $6 million toward one player next season. They’ll have to again fill out most of their roster with minimum-salaried players at about $2.5 million each.

The Lakers won’t have a first-round draft pick because of the Davis trade in 2018. They also don’t have a second-round pick.

Before Vogel was let go, he received vocal support from Lakers players.

“I respect Frank as a coach, as a man,” James said. “The partnership that we had over the few years here has been nothing but just candid, great conversation. This is a guy who gives everything to the game and prepared us.”

“He knows what he’s doing. He goes to war for his players,” Davis said. “He wants to win.”

There wasn’t enough winning to save Vogel’s job. He wasn’t the only news of the day.

James met with the media and acknowledged dissatisfaction with the way the season turned out.

“The frustration level was definitely at a high at times,” he said. I came here to win a championship, and I want to win more. I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish [in 2020], and I’m still hungry.”

James missed 26 games this season and pointed to injuries as a focal point of his frustration. He, Davis and Russell Westbrook played only 21 games together.

James also couldn’t fathom that the team used 41 different starting lineups.

“That’s literally half the season. We never got the opportunity to see what the ball club could have been,” James said. “Definitely frustrating for sure.”

The slippage in the Lakers’ defense was not lost on James. The team “can’t be giving up 129, 130 points” a game and expect to win, he said.

Two games stood out defensively down the stretch. Phoenix hung 140 points on the Lakers a month ago, including a whopping 76 points in the paint, while Dallas made 20 three-pointers en route to 128 points two weeks ago.

The Lakers didn’t only struggle defensively. Their offense got better as the season progressed, but there were periods of stagnation. They consistently struggled from outside and were 22nd in three-point accuracy.

“I think our roster did not work,” Pelinka said. ”I think we have to get better on multiple fronts, and we will this summer.”