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I don't even think I'm going to watch tonight...
Until a move is made this team isn't worth watching.
Until a move is made this team isn't worth watching.
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
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Lakers have had 3/5 starters most of the season when healthy - AD, Lebron, Prince.
Austin was coming off the bench by game 10, and DLo game 30 something. The rest of the starting lineup has varied because of injuries and play.
I don’t feel like it’s hard to know what your role is on a team… Rui - score, AR - score/play make, etc but you do want to know when you’re going to play. I feel like one of the biggest issues now we knew going into the season… too many guys. It’s all good to make that sacrifice when the team is winning but can’t do it when the losing starts. Also I’m sure egos play a role if you’re a guy like DLo who’s been an all star and now you’re losing minutes to a journeyman scrub like Cam Reddish… that has to hurt lol
Austin was coming off the bench by game 10, and DLo game 30 something. The rest of the starting lineup has varied because of injuries and play.
I don’t feel like it’s hard to know what your role is on a team… Rui - score, AR - score/play make, etc but you do want to know when you’re going to play. I feel like one of the biggest issues now we knew going into the season… too many guys. It’s all good to make that sacrifice when the team is winning but can’t do it when the losing starts. Also I’m sure egos play a role if you’re a guy like DLo who’s been an all star and now you’re losing minutes to a journeyman scrub like Cam Reddish… that has to hurt lol
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Lakers’ Darvin Ham hot seat chatter is real, but there’s a simple solution: Win
“Trouble in Paradise.”
When that Lakers-related text message popped up on my cell phone screen Thursday morning, with a source close to the situation confirming what our Shams Charania and Jovan Buha had reported in the hours that followed a 110-96 loss to the Miami Heat at home on Wednesday night, it was about as good a sign as any that the Darvin Ham honeymoon — if not the marriage itself — was all but over.
It’s one thing to start your debut season 2-10 as Ham did a season ago, when he was just five months removed from replacing Frank Vogel and in the first year of a four-year deal. He had organizational time and patience to spare back then and made great use of it by leading one of the more memorable turnarounds in this current era en route to the Lakers’ Western Conference finals defeat by the Denver Nuggets. But this — a post-In-Season Tournament championship freefall in which they’ve lost nine of 12 games and fallen below .500 for the first time since Nov. 10 — is quite another.
Maybe the controversial choice to hang that IST banner inside the house that Kobe built was some sort of hoops hex, because it has been all bad in Laker Land since then. And make no mistake, this hot-seat chatter is real.
Yet as we’re reminded every year, there’s a significant difference between the mood around a coach souring and the power brokers above him actually deciding to make a change. With that in mind, a high-ranking Lakers source pushed back against the idea Ham is on the verge of being fired. Still, serious pressure from within is clearly being applied on Ham, and there’s no better way for him to relieve it than by winning his way out in the days and weeks to come.
The Miami game was the start of a Lakers stretch in which they have 10 of 12 games at home — 11 if you count a Jan. 23 “road” game against the Clippers — and are blessed with no back-to-backs. They host a Memphis team on Friday night that isn’t nearly as bad as it was a few weeks back, as the Grizzlies have won five of eight games since Ja Morant returned Dec. 19 from his 25-game suspension. Then it’s Sunday evening against the inner-city rival Clippers, who have won 13 of 15 games in this early James Harden era and had won 11 in a row against the Lakers before that streak was broken on Nov. 3. The Lakers host Toronto on Tuesday, Phoenix on Thursday and then head to Utah for a game Jan. 13.
But the problem, quite clearly, is that there’s nothing from these past three-plus weeks that makes you feel like they’ll figure it out anytime soon. Since that win over Indiana in the IST title game, where LeBron James secured tournament MVP honors and all was well in their world, the Lakers are 23rd in net rating, 24th in offensive rating and 18th in defense while going 3-9. By comparison, they were 14-9 to that previous point and had the league’s 15th-best net rating, 22nd-best offensive rating and seventh-best defensive rating.
More specifically, it’s a major problem that the front office’s summer of roundly praised roster work — namely the re-signing of D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura — has led to this sort of mess after the way those players meshed so well in last year’s playoffs. And as Buha detailed in his visit on The Athletic NBA Show’s Tampering podcast this week, it doesn’t help Ham’s cause that his messaging has been so different from that of the players in the locker room (in essence, Ham has been highlighting the impact of the Lakers’ injury woes while players have been preaching accountability and a dire need to turn it around).
The other factor here, as is always the case in situations like these, relates to a possible replacement. It was no surprise “Doc Rivers” was trending on social media channels in the hours after the Lakers story dropped, as the former Magic/Celtics/Clippers/Sixers coach and current ESPN analyst is currently available. When you talk to people closer to the situation, it’s Lakers assistant coach Phil Handy who is more often brought up as a possible pick. But again, we’re not there quite yet.
The Lakers have already changed head coaches six times since the end of the Phil Jackson era in 2011 — seven if you count the five-game interim tenure of Bernie Bickerstaff in 2012. That unflattering fact, rest assured, is not lost on owner Jeanie Buss as she assesses this situation alongside vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka. It would be much easier for all involved if the team would simply start playing better — like, soon.
As Ham would so often say last season, when he’d share the story of how the team’s analytics department gave them a 0.3 percent chance of making the playoffs, his Lakers have beaten long odds before. The question now, though, is whether Ham can persuade these Lakers to follow him on that treacherous path again before he pays the price for stumbling.
“Trouble in Paradise.”
When that Lakers-related text message popped up on my cell phone screen Thursday morning, with a source close to the situation confirming what our Shams Charania and Jovan Buha had reported in the hours that followed a 110-96 loss to the Miami Heat at home on Wednesday night, it was about as good a sign as any that the Darvin Ham honeymoon — if not the marriage itself — was all but over.
It’s one thing to start your debut season 2-10 as Ham did a season ago, when he was just five months removed from replacing Frank Vogel and in the first year of a four-year deal. He had organizational time and patience to spare back then and made great use of it by leading one of the more memorable turnarounds in this current era en route to the Lakers’ Western Conference finals defeat by the Denver Nuggets. But this — a post-In-Season Tournament championship freefall in which they’ve lost nine of 12 games and fallen below .500 for the first time since Nov. 10 — is quite another.
Maybe the controversial choice to hang that IST banner inside the house that Kobe built was some sort of hoops hex, because it has been all bad in Laker Land since then. And make no mistake, this hot-seat chatter is real.
Yet as we’re reminded every year, there’s a significant difference between the mood around a coach souring and the power brokers above him actually deciding to make a change. With that in mind, a high-ranking Lakers source pushed back against the idea Ham is on the verge of being fired. Still, serious pressure from within is clearly being applied on Ham, and there’s no better way for him to relieve it than by winning his way out in the days and weeks to come.
The Miami game was the start of a Lakers stretch in which they have 10 of 12 games at home — 11 if you count a Jan. 23 “road” game against the Clippers — and are blessed with no back-to-backs. They host a Memphis team on Friday night that isn’t nearly as bad as it was a few weeks back, as the Grizzlies have won five of eight games since Ja Morant returned Dec. 19 from his 25-game suspension. Then it’s Sunday evening against the inner-city rival Clippers, who have won 13 of 15 games in this early James Harden era and had won 11 in a row against the Lakers before that streak was broken on Nov. 3. The Lakers host Toronto on Tuesday, Phoenix on Thursday and then head to Utah for a game Jan. 13.
But the problem, quite clearly, is that there’s nothing from these past three-plus weeks that makes you feel like they’ll figure it out anytime soon. Since that win over Indiana in the IST title game, where LeBron James secured tournament MVP honors and all was well in their world, the Lakers are 23rd in net rating, 24th in offensive rating and 18th in defense while going 3-9. By comparison, they were 14-9 to that previous point and had the league’s 15th-best net rating, 22nd-best offensive rating and seventh-best defensive rating.
More specifically, it’s a major problem that the front office’s summer of roundly praised roster work — namely the re-signing of D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura — has led to this sort of mess after the way those players meshed so well in last year’s playoffs. And as Buha detailed in his visit on The Athletic NBA Show’s Tampering podcast this week, it doesn’t help Ham’s cause that his messaging has been so different from that of the players in the locker room (in essence, Ham has been highlighting the impact of the Lakers’ injury woes while players have been preaching accountability and a dire need to turn it around).
The other factor here, as is always the case in situations like these, relates to a possible replacement. It was no surprise “Doc Rivers” was trending on social media channels in the hours after the Lakers story dropped, as the former Magic/Celtics/Clippers/Sixers coach and current ESPN analyst is currently available. When you talk to people closer to the situation, it’s Lakers assistant coach Phil Handy who is more often brought up as a possible pick. But again, we’re not there quite yet.
The Lakers have already changed head coaches six times since the end of the Phil Jackson era in 2011 — seven if you count the five-game interim tenure of Bernie Bickerstaff in 2012. That unflattering fact, rest assured, is not lost on owner Jeanie Buss as she assesses this situation alongside vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka. It would be much easier for all involved if the team would simply start playing better — like, soon.
As Ham would so often say last season, when he’d share the story of how the team’s analytics department gave them a 0.3 percent chance of making the playoffs, his Lakers have beaten long odds before. The question now, though, is whether Ham can persuade these Lakers to follow him on that treacherous path again before he pays the price for stumbling.
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Is there a pic of Ham without his hands in his pockets? 
Season opener tonight. Always exciting. Lesgooooo
Season opener tonight. Always exciting. Lesgooooo
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“The lakers play tonight” has once again turned into a threat
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Jake Fischer:
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Still would need to trade DLo, Rui and another smalls small salary for him.
So your 5-11 offensive players are
Prince, Vando, Cam, Gabe, Wood, Max
Maybe you can get 20 points a game from them collectively.
And as for the Murray trade, it’s hard to envision they don’t push for AR or nothing.
So your 5-11 offensive players are
Prince, Vando, Cam, Gabe, Wood, Max
Maybe you can get 20 points a game from them collectively.
And as for the Murray trade, it’s hard to envision they don’t push for AR or nothing.
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Can we trade Dlo to the nets for their role players? Some combo of DFS, Richards & O’Neale would be a come up.
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Lakers need to fill holes without creating new ones as well.
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whos ready for a nice *** whooping tonight?
if we keep losing on this homestand darvin ham is done.
you can get away losing like this on a team that is a bottom feeder but not with one who has both ad and lebron.
as a coach your job is to coach these players to succeed. just like any other job in the world. if you not producing results your *** is grass
like the great eli drake use to say thats not an insult thats just a fact of life
if we keep losing on this homestand darvin ham is done.
you can get away losing like this on a team that is a bottom feeder but not with one who has both ad and lebron.
as a coach your job is to coach these players to succeed. just like any other job in the world. if you not producing results your *** is grass
like the great eli drake use to say thats not an insult thats just a fact of life
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lose to Memphis and Clippers and he’s gone IMO
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And after they fire him we will still lose games and the organization will just look foolish.
We already made the mistake with vogel....
We already made the mistake with vogel....
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If thats the case, then ham is gone sunday night. But i’ll believe it when i see it. This team bout to lose 7 the next 10 and my guess is this moron still gonna be the damn coach
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Save us Coach Handy 
MVP
Supporter
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Eh, Vogel wasn't that good.
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Those of you Ham Sandwich enthusiasts who think it won't get any better with a new coach are hilarious and are completely blind to the Lakers' MAIN problem.
Ham himself is a bigger problem than the Lakers sub par offense and shooting woes because these players are no longer playing with a purpose and this falls entirely on the head coach.
If Ham gets canned, y'all bout to see his replacement succeed where he failed.
Since it seems Bigleemelone ain't no longer on NT, I'm down to bet anyone here that the replacement coach, if it happens, will do better than Ham.
Ham himself is a bigger problem than the Lakers sub par offense and shooting woes because these players are no longer playing with a purpose and this falls entirely on the head coach.
If Ham gets canned, y'all bout to see his replacement succeed where he failed.
Since it seems Bigleemelone ain't no longer on NT, I'm down to bet anyone here that the replacement coach, if it happens, will do better than Ham.
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vogel's hands were tied and he was always in a lose-lose situation with rust here
ham was blessed getting off Rust
ham has a few weeks to figure it out, unfortunately the injuries are sealing his fate.
if we remain 500 this month, hes getting dumped before valetines day
ham was blessed getting off Rust
ham has a few weeks to figure it out, unfortunately the injuries are sealing his fate.
if we remain 500 this month, hes getting dumped before valetines day
MVP
Supporter
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Bud isn't coaching right now correct?
MVP
Supporter
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Eh, they goofed by not bringing in Lue, he was right there for the taking
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We goofed not bringing Phil in the year we brought Pringles.
We goofed brining in Vogel and not Lue.
This organization has made many mistakes but the 2020 chip covered some of that.
We goofed brining in Vogel and not Lue.
This organization has made many mistakes but the 2020 chip covered some of that.
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All good things must come to an end… is this the year?
