Head Coach Mr. DARVIN HAM Thread

[2019]

Ham is a likable guy and I think a person players would like to play for. He's growing on the job and it'll take some time.. ask Mike Brown. I just wish he'd have hired a staff like he was a first time HC and not like a god father looking to build his own young coaching tree.

But his rotations cost us a 3-6 spot in the playoffs and that's a big deal..potentially massive.

[Bron2AD]

[JUST-MING]

Expected to see more people give Darvin his flowers. Swept the season series against Milwaukee with Lebron in street clothes.

[levon]

Kobe would hate this guy so much. He's got zero game management skills. Kobe used to talk so much about the importance of momentum.

[tox]

The +/- of Prince at the 4 has to be like -10000

[tox]

Also I think Ham deserves more credit for building a good offense schematically and stuff. His rotations drive me crazy but without AD and Wood/Vando out, you basically have three real frontcourt players left, and one of them is Hayes

[levon]

[Theseus]

Good win tonight, better win the next one too. We get an extra day of rest, too. Good news for the weary legs of the Lakers backcourt!

[Bron2AD]

this dude benched Rui, DLO, Austin to start the season so he can start Prince/Cam Reddish

[tox]

[DocK36]

[Cutheon]

[tox]

[Nonamehero]

[tox]

^
Literally from DLO who has been an outspoken critic of Ham at times...

[mhan00]

I'll give Ham some props for finally recognizing Cam should be on a short ass leash. Too bad he torpedoed us already by pretending Cam was an NBA starter in December and destroying us. Sure would be nice to have a handful of extra wins right now when everything is tight as hell and we are still staring down the barrel of needing to win two straight play in games to squeak into the 8th seed despite us winning at a good clip. Cam did us the favor of getting hurt and forcing Ham's hand, otherwise I'm pretty sure we'd be below Houston right now while Cam was still getting 30 minutes a game. (bleep) Ham.

[kikanga]

[tox]

+1 to Cam being injured saving our season. I give Ham a tiny bit of slack because Cam was legitimately good until the IST -- he was actually really good on defense and just "quite bad" on offense as opposed to "really bad" lol.

But a better coach would have cut the cord sooner. I'm not sure if it's injuries or what but he doesn't have that juice anymore on defense. He's already a terrible offensive player, and a 2 game stretch of going 5-11 from 3 isn't gonna change that. On top of that he's a horrendous rebounder on a roster that struggles with it, in competition for minutes with a positionally elite rebounder (who shoots ~45% on spot up 3s to boot!)

If Vando isn't back, I think Cam unfortunately has a role to play when we match up against big wings. Especially a team that has multiple of them and LeBron can't guard both.

[Bron2AD]

with Gabe vincent coming we might see a 4 guard rotation

[mad55557777]

[MJST]

Yeah the Cam injury is likely what forced Ham to go back to what we knew worked last year.

I remember when we went into the Pelicans game, and Ham said that the starting lineup of Prince/Vando/Rui/LeBron/AD was going to be the starting lineup for 'the forseeable future'.. I remember feeling like if the man wasn't fired, our season was done. And it would have been.

But then Rui got injured and had to miss time, he then wanted to run a starting lineup of Reaves, Prince, Reddish, Bron, AD ... which was followed by us getting destroyed by Memphis and Miami by double digits.. and barely beating the Clippers by 3 and Toronto by 1. Then LeBron sat out, and then and Ham was forced to go back to starting DLo and he put up 39 vs the Jazz and Ham couldn't then put him back on the bench. That saved our season. Then we were starting to click with Vando as he finally found his groove again but he got hurt vs Boston.

Now after Vando got hurt vs Boston. Ham had a decision to make. He could go back to Prince... or he could start Rui. He decided to finally start Rui, and imho that was the best decision he made all season, in lieu of Vando's injury.

It was obvious to all of us, but he made the decision and has stuck with it.

If all those things hadn't happened, the Lakers would be firmly either in the 10th or 11th seed right now.

Ham was forced into a lot of the 'good' decisions he wound up making with the starters, but the one he made to start Rui over Prince, he does deserve credit for, and not going backwards on it after the Knicks game when Rui initially struggled in the role.

To critique Ham for basically punting the first 37-40 games of the season unnecessarily experimenting with stuff we all knew wouldn't work? It's well deserved.

We lost 21 of the first 40 games of the season because of all that and stood with a record of 19-21. Since then we've gone 22-11. If Ham doesn't punt the first 40 games and we go even 25-15 across them our record stands at 47-26 currently and we'd be the 4th seed in the West.

So all that criticism has merit. But I'll also give him credit as well for deciding to start Rui as opposed to sticking with Prince as that's one of the few lineup decisions he wasn't forced to make, as Prince wasn't out hurt when Ham made that decision.
_________________
How NBA 2K18 failed the All-Time Lakers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxMBYm3wwxk

[Sina]

We’ve tried to go big, tried to go small, tried to play defense and tried to play offense. Finally we’re back to what we’re last year, and most of the players are getting better.

[danzag]

[mhan00]

We are staring down the barrel of having to win two straight play in games because of this man. Right now it’s the Dubs, and then either Phoenix or Sac. Steph and Klay are always a threat to go nuclear, so that isn’t a safe game though we’d be heavily favored. Phoenix is of course terrifying with KD and Booker and Beal. And we’ve shown no ability to beat Sac at all since Fox and Monk absolutely eviscerate us while Sabonis outplays AD. This man has cost us. He needs to go, even with our recent run, because he screwed us over that badly playing around with lineups while ignoring what worked before for over half the season.

[Theseus]

Bruv, get rid of the hockey rotations. Stagger your lineups. Also, use Max sometimes, especially on nights like tonight where your regulars are struggling mightily to summon energy.