Breaking news: Lakers head coach Darvin Ham Sr was fired and suspended according…….
The Los Angeles Lakers are at DEFCON 3. That scale, developed by the United States military, describes an alert state. A 5 is considered all is well, and a 1 means total disaster is imminent.
After the Lakers lost to the Miami Heat on Wednesday night, they fell to 11-18 outside of the In-Season Tournament and 3-9 since they beat the Pacers in Vegas to take home the Cup. They sit with a negative point differential, schedule-adjusted, at DunksAndThrees.com, with the 20th-ranked offense and 11th-ranked defense.
So now, fingers are starting to be pointed, and Darvin Ham is first up to take the blame.
Following the loss to the Heat Wednesday night, LeBron James left without speaking to reporters. There has been consistent reporting from various sources for weeks that tension was forming in the locker room in regards to Ham. That spilled out on Thursday morning with this report from Shams Charania.
“I’m told there’s a growing, deepening disconnect between Darvin Ham and that Lakers locker room right now, and a lot of it is stemming from extreme rotational changes, lineup changes.”@ShamsCharania on Head Coach Darvin Ham and the Lakers.
“I’m told there’s a growing, deepening disconnect between Darvin Ham and that Lakers locker room right now, and a lot of it is stemming from extreme rotational changes, lineup changes.”@ShamsCharania on Head Coach Darvin Ham and the Lakers.
The biggest criticism for Ham stems from his decision to move away from lineups and rotations that were instrumental in the Lakers’ late season and playoff run that resulted in a conference finals sweep to the Nuggets. But it’s moved beyond individual decisions and toward a larger sense that the team has “quit” on Ham.
What’s baffling about the Lakers’ struggles is that for the first six weeks of the season, LeBron James was playing incredible basketball. He is one of the leaders in advanced metrics like EPM and Box Plus-Minus this season and is averaging 25-7-7 while shooting 39.5% from 3, the second-best mark of his career.
Then, as James tailed off, Anthony Davis stepped up. Davis is averaging 29 points on 55-39-78 shooting with 14 rebounds per game over his last 15 games while contributing 3.9 stocks (steals plus blocks) per game.
Yet in that 15-game span, the Lakers have a plus-minus of zero in Davis’ 553 minutes and, for the season, have only outscored opponents by 0.9 points per 100 possessions with Davis on the floor. And they have lost their minutes with Davis when LeBron James is on the bench this season, which is damning both for the surrounding talent and Davis’ ability to lift lineups the way star players are expected.
So with things spiraling so badly and the team clearly aware that things need to change, the temperature is rising on Ham’s seat. It is very typical of Lakers culture that the team simultaneously convinced themselves that an outlier stretch in March versus tanking and/or resting teams and two series versus flawed opponents in bad spots was proof of this team’s ability to contend and is currently convinced that coaching, which was essential to that same conference finals run, is the problem that must be solved.
But if the Lakers do decide to make a change at head coach, who replaces Ham as head of the most popular basketball franchise in the world? Here’s a brief list of candidates, based purely off speculation and not insider intel, ranked on their prospective fit and likelihood in my opinion.
