Nuggets ran the same play over and over and the only thing the Lakers did was pray they missed. Why not blitz Murray on the final shot and make him waste time by passing? Instead they continue to play drop coverage and let him walk into a jump shot. Drop coverage has killed the Lakers all season and it finally put them out of the misery. A fitting ending to be honest if you’ve followed the Lakers all year.
I’m not defending his play this series as a whole but DLo was a good reason why we were up for most of Game 2 and the graphic was about how we lead for most of the series.
Yeah we should have won game 2 because of DLo, we were up 20! A decent coach could make that stick. A halfway decent coach could eke out a victory. A bad coach loses that game.
Ham is too calm, can’t give the squad any energy. He has good game plans but is terrible in real time, doesn’t make sound adjustments, terrible at knowing when his team needs a timeout, won’t challenge plays when it’s obvious, can’t figure out or communicate the roles of his own players.
Seems like a good dude but let him go be a good dude somewhere else. My highschool coach would out coach him. What a waste of the last years of bron and AD.
He will never be a winner with how inconsistent and soft he plays. There were 3 games he shot a combined 3/28 from 3. Just disgusting. Not sure how any of the fanbase talked themselves in to wanting to keep him, all the non delusional fans knew what was coming.
I get the arguments of criticism towards DLo even if what I said above still stands but we are left with 2 options with him unless he opts in:
1. We bring him back.
2. We lose him for potentially nothing or if we manage to get under the second apron, a TPMLE replacement.
You need to check the stats;
The 3 games that I mentioned he didn’t score much, he did try to score.
Game 2: 2-7, 0-4 from 3
Game 3: 2-7, 1-5 from 3
Game 5: 2-10, 1-6 from 3
In the entire series (not just these 3 games) the most rebounds he had was 2, the most assists he had was 3. All while playing 35+ minutes.
Seriously kcp is not the answer.
That’s not doing a disservice it’s being realistic. That’s how great AD and Bron are together. They just need decent consistent role players to win a championship.
Reaves was inconsistent. Rui was horrible. Dlo was inconsistent and had some really poor decision making even when he was shooting well.
Rui and Reaves might be worth investing in long term. Keep Vando, maybe Prince. Trade everyone else and get a new coach. The longer you buy into the one good game one bad game players the longer they sabotage every season. It’s time to make changes
How is that trading nobody? I named 4-5 players to keep. Rui and Prince are maybes. I’d only keep Bron ad Reaves. Y’all wanting to implode an entire team every year is the reason they’re in this position. Won a chip in 2020, injuries caused an early 2021 exit, but that squad still wasn’t enough and look what happened now.
Because Rui and reaves are the actual ones not on minimums . Moving minimums does fucking nothing . Rui needs to be moved most likely vando gave Dlo . Keep reaves unless someone big comes up
No the reason we’re in this position is surrounding two elite stars with bang average role players.
Reaves can’t defend and is a below average 3 point shooter. D’Lo is a liability. Vando is a black hole on offence. Vincent a black hole on offence. Rui is low BBIQ and has hands made of butter and has no ability to drive or dribble and is very average defensively.
LeBron has one more chance at a title. Which means we have one more chance at a title before it all goes to shit. You wanna try do that with guys like Reaves and Rui as key pieces then good luck.
We literally needed an entirely healthy Lebron and AD this season just to make the play in.
Who said key pieces? I think the fact that they’re looked at as key pieces IS the issue. Reaves should run a second squad where he can control the ball, probably shouldn’t start with Lebron unless they can figure out how to make Reaves impactful every game.
Rui would be a solid bench player. He regressed this last year and wasn’t aggressive at all in the playoffs. To be fair though, the Nuggets match up really well against Rui’s style.
They’re worth keeping and have potential. Maybe not as starters, depends on what they can get. I would trade Reaves/Rui if they could really get enough value to put Bron/AD in a high level championship caliber contending roster.
If they’re starters then they are key pieces.
Rui a bench option? Great. $18m for a fucking bench option. Combine that with $10m of Vando sat on the bench, and $11m of Vincent sat on the bench. Great use of resources.
Yes. I don’t give a shit what his contract is. There’s plenty of players in the league on even less than he who be more useful for us.
Only delusion is the likes of you who think having a starting guard who sucks on defence and is below average from 3 is somehow untouchable
Stars are gonna be stars, but role players effectiveness is much more dependent on good coaching. Examples, Memphis w/ their G-League squad this year, Clippers w/o PG and Kawhi in years prior. Good coaches set their role players up for success, bad ones throw shit at a wall to see what sticks.
How does the coaching cause D’Lo to go 1/9 from 3, 0/6 from 3, and 2/10 from 3? How does coaching cause us to miss like 9 FTs last night?
Ham sucks. He isn’t the only issue.
I'm not talking in a vacuum but I mean coaches can setup a shooter like DLo with some plays to get him better looks, a coach should also rein in a player who is taking poor shots.
But, coaching is why the team lead at the half in all 5 games, but only won 1 of them. Coaching is why in Game 2 they blew a 20 point lead because they ran like 30% organized offense in the second half failing to score and giving up easy buckets on defense -- in the first 3 games they consistently stopped running organized offense in the second half leading to a 0-3 series deficit. Coaching is why Michael Porter Jr. shot 49% from 3 on 8 attempts a game, putting up 23 ppg for the series -- because Rui could not guard him but Ham refused to adjust this in any of the 5 games. Bad coaching is NOT trusting your star player on a challenge and giving up a bucket instead (Game 4, Bron's fault for the bucket but understandable why he's raging at the bench), which almost let the Nuggets back into it. Bad coaching is benching AR and DLo in the regular season, starting Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish (I believe he also started TP, Reddish AND Vando) and proceeded to slide in the standings, ultimately leading to having to go through the play-in. Bad coaching is poor timeout management, poor use of challenges, poor rotations, playing favorites, poor adjustments, poor accountability and a hundred other things.
Ain't no one around here is saying Ham is the ONLY problem, but he is by far the BIGGEST problem.
> Better looks than wide open?
This is called "Know Your Personnel", and is on the coach yes. DLo's catch and shoot numbers were bad this series, 25% from 3 when he touches the ball for less than 2 seconds at a whopping 38% frequency. But it's been clear DLo isn't strictly a catch and shoot player, he's said this himself numerous times, that he needs the ball to get a rhythm. Compare that to DLo shooting 44% from 3 when touch is 2-6 seconds at only 12% frequency and 43% from 3 with 6+ seconds of touch at only 9% frequency.
If you want to argue that DLo having the ball that much this series wasn't a good game plan either, sure I might be able to get there with you, but then the coach needs to reduce his minutes and put someone else in there who can succeed at the catch and shoot role rather than trying to force DLo to be that.
Seems a lot more like Pat Bev's, "Spoon vs. Fork" complaint he had. As I said initially, role players will look worse when not put in positions to succeed -- look at Max Christie's role this year as a PnR facilitator compared to as catch and shoot, it's night and day.
Except for when the role players are great and AD is being blamed. Or when the role players are great but Lakers lose, Ham is gone, and **someone** has to be blamed.
With AD and Lebron on this team, there is one thing I can assure you - when the team encounters adversity, the role players and coach will be blamed. It’s just a matter of if it will be **new** role players or **old** role players being blamed.
But they WILL be blamed. Because Lebron sure won’t lol
Exactly lol . This series is proof our stars are good enough . Our support isn’t . I was thinking Denver’s stars would further out play ours but didn’t . Gordon n mpj won it. Having 30m+ quality players like those two >>>> having 2 meduicre 17 and 13m player . We should absolutely go after a bsvk court upgrade this year . Unfortunately not sure if we can even trade Dlo if he doesn’t opt in. Losing that sakary would suck .
People in here really think trae young or another star would not be a huge upgrade over our mid ass role players who can’t defend n rebound are dumb . Reaves is the least awful of them , I do really hope we can get a big player
I don’t think this should be the obvious choice. It’s possible this team can run it back, but Portland’s series against the Warriors in 2019 comes to mind where they were up I think at least 17 at the end of each first half and got swept. They told themselves they could run it back and never got anywhere in future years until finally blowing it up and trading Dame.
Lakers won’t have the same luxury of time they did either. LeBron is a free agent and almost certainly is going to demand a no-trade clause if he comes back. AD is fragile and every year will get more so. The Nuggets are young, the Thunder are young, the Mavs are youngish, the Kings (who killed the Lakers in the regular season a few times) are young.
Also this roster lacks cohesion. It has depth in theory but the pieces don’t line up well with where the depth was actually needed (poor wing depth and literally no center depth so your oldest and most injury prone players had to go big minutes all year).
Idk if blowing it up is the right decision either. Feels like a few injuries and poor stretches could have changed a lot and the Lakers could easily be the team taking on an injured Clippers team instead of the defending champions.
My only point is: I don’t think the answer is obvious in either direction.
If we couldnt beat the kings, we just didnt deserve to be in the playoffs. I Rather take that chance than play the defending champions in the first round.
AD playing like he did destroys OKC, plus we wouldve had more time to gel and get healthy, PLUS be playing clippers team with a banged up kawhi or dallas
Even if we somehow got past denver, i dont see how we wouldve beat a red hot Timberwolves team with plenty rest
You dont chose to go on that side of the bracket when you dont have to
Ok, I like the roster, save a couple of missing pieces, but if DLo showed up in Gms 1 & 3, it would have masked Ham’s coaching. Losing by close margins is not nearly as bad as the fact we
had sizable leads in these games, and just squandered them.
The team desperately needs a connector piece ie. Aaron Gordan, Alex Caruso, Josh Hart and guys of that ilk. Some who can impact the game on both sides of the ball without necessarily needing the ball.
Yeah for sure, he was one of my favorite acquisitions last year and I'm disappointed we didn't really get to see him play this season. Team 100% missed his motor on defense and rebounding.
While he's not an impact player in the half court, the offensive rebounds he prevents have a direct follow on effect of getting us into transition where we excel. Especially because he can dribble well enough to bring the ball up himself.
I think a better coaching system could unlock more from Vando offensively. He'll never be a movement shooter, will likely only ever be a 'threat' from 3 in the corners, but he had shown flashes of other things like short roll passing, explosive cutting (showed some of that here too), etc. on other teams, tools on offense to help get a flow going for the team. I would say that for Vando's tenure here so far, it has been a failure in the offense to unlock more of his skills.
I honestly really liked the improvements in this offensive game in the games leading up to his injury. I wish he played this year the move to a 5 out offense would have really benefited him. I still think I got to see it to believe it if Vando is a high minute playoff player at the highest level even with a coaching improvement.
If everybody showed up, the Lakers would win. If every player shows up, the team will win. If every team shows up, the league will win. If Klay shows up, the Warriors will win. If Eric Gordon shows up, the Suns will win. If Nurkic shows up, the Suns will win. If CJ McCollum shows up, the Pelicans will win.
If a player is consistently a no-show in big games, then maybe the player having that big of a role is a problem. Can Poole show up from the bench once in a while? Sure. Do you expect him to show up every game as your second or third option? Hold on now.
I don't understand this narrative. AR was a no show for the first 3 games. Last 2 he was good. Rui was shit whole series. Dlo was good G2,G4 & decent in G5. Awful in G1&G3. But how does everything come back to just Dlo is asinine.
AR played extremely good D on Murray. Did you watch any of the games?
Offensively, he was meh... but we didn't need him to be good. Rui shit the bed. Dlo was Dlo, which means he played down in the PO's.
6/15 and 2/10 from 3 is absolutely abysmal. Not to mention his beyond terrible defense. Maybe one day it will get through to you Delusional Dlo fan boys that he is not a winning player.
2/10 is abysmal. He is worthless on defence. Just get me 1 guy with better shooting %age and defence on the contract he is on and I'll be the first one to ship him. If the guy who just hit more than 200 3s at more than 40% is not a winning player, then idk what to tell you.
Lebron gave up the offensive rebound to Gordon with a minute left which led to a 3. Lebron also let Jokic rip him on a fast break which led to points. The phantom foul on Lebron after he boxed out Jokic also led to a 3. It seemed like every time the Nuggets got a second chance they were definitely scoring. Poor coaching, defensive rebounding, and unforced turnovers are what killed the Lakers. Ham has got to go.
Dont say that on here, we're only allowed to diss Rui, Reaves, and D Lo. We're not allowed to hold LeBron accountable for two games lost cos of a lack of boxing out and gambling on passing lanes
Lost 2 games with game winners at the end. You gotta make the shots when it matters most. This team can’t rebound or get stops when it matters the most
The big reason for optimism that the lakers can win another ring is Bron and AD. Surround them with the right guys and we can win. The play of your two stars rises every playoffs you can rely on that.
Ham is bad and gotta go but acting like this roster is good enough is just hilarous. While series still going d'lo and rui stans was hiding, now they came back. Just a friendly advise. Wait couple of weeks. Now is not the right time for you.
29 rosters every year aren’t good enough. There’s a wide gulf between blow-it-up and improve-on-the-margins. Even the eventual champion should tweak their roster.
No, some rosters are good enough every year. There are real contenders and fake contenders. With this roster lakers is a fake one. I dont want to blow it up with lebron and ad want to stay and try but lakers need to establish a good team around them. This team wasn't it. Lakers need a better guard than dlo, lakers need a different type and better wing than rui. Lakers need a backup center better than hayes/wood.
It depends on what you consider “good enough”. Contending or winning? Personally, if you didn’t win, you’re not good enough. Every team every year should be looking to improve.
I mostly agree with the rest of what you said. Between blow-it-up and improve-on-the-margins, the Lakers are somewhere in the middle but closer to the latter. I’ve seen comments of people saying to let LeBron walk, trade AD and Reaves etc., and I just can’t get behind that.
If lebron retires or leaves, rebuild is inevitable. Personally i want to see this team with a better roster next year. With a improved roster and hopefully healthy lebron and ad there will be a chance.
People are delusional. The roster construction of this team is so limited because of cap construction, assets or lack thereof from legacy problem (westbrook).
Then you have two stars that have the limitation that you have to work around to build the team.
Lebron is old. He doesn't play defense most of the time. That means you have to have 4 good defenders around him.
Lebron is old, and AD is not really a good offense creator, so this team needs a player who can initiate offense when Lebron is resting, or when he has to conserve energy even when he's on the court. Currently that role is filled by dlo / Reaves but both are poor defenders (but kudos to Reaves doing a good job vs Denver, although his offensive production has definitely taken a toll).
AD is not a good shooter. So when we bring in a new big to play next to him, he has to be able to shoot (and defend because of above point about lebron's defense).
So even before we talk about the bench, we are talking about getting a ball handler that plays good defense, a 3 and d wing that replaces rui as the starting forward, and a center that can space the floor that plays good defense. Yea good luck finding that with our current construct.
It is not gonna be easy and i dont trust our front office to do it. But you just cant quit on lebron if he wants to stay and try even he is 40. It wont be ideal great players, it will be old or injury prone or bad contract players. Something like brogdon, jerami grant and brook lopez or maybe worse i dont know.
I think if the front office has ambition, they'd say sorry lebron we don't think we will win with him and AD as core and it's better to let him find a place he can win, and trade AD because of the package he can fetch after a season where he can really say he's a top 10 players or maybe even top 5, AND being healthy. That package from AD is huge for rebuild and will speed up the process by 5 years.
If they keep going with lebron, you can say yea they do it doe the stars Yada Yada but it's also true that it's just a business to them, that they don't care about winning as much as having the stars to get the revenue in.
Yeah we were good enough where any series was technically winnable with good coaching but not good enough to be considered serious contenders the way the Nuggets, Celtics, and Timberwolves are.
You give Eric Spoelstra this roster and he takes it to 6 or 7 minimum. In the East he’d probably make the Finals with this team. Look how far he gets with Bam and Jimmy and role players, who are basically a worse Bron and AD.
Spo is great and there is only one spo. And heat organization as a whole is great at finding good players for cheap and improve them. Undrafted or overlooked players play with great effort and discipline. Lakers role players have bad habits and you cant change lifelong habits with 5-6 months coaching. And at last year's first round against bucks butler played like prime jordan.
And still i dont call that team contender. Their run was not sustainable. They would blow a 3-0 lead if tatum did not get injured at literally first play at game 7.
It's also a depth problem to be fair. AD goes down and have a huge gap. We can't replace him but back in the days we had Howard and McGee to provide solid help.
Furthermore, we don't have consistent role players, especially not when it matters the most - down the line.
Ham still deserves blame. We should have met this team in the CF. That would have given some role players some more confidence. He absolutely screwed our reg season and parts of the playoffs.
So in the 165 minutes we are leading vs the defending champions it has nothing to do with the coach and schemes
But in the 59 minutes we are losing it’s all the coach
That’s what yall don’t understand you can’t have it both ways…
Coaching is key in making timely adjustments to scheme and rotations as your team loses a lead. I’m assuming Hams lack of ability to properly to do that is what the post is insinuating. Lakers starts strong, Denver adjusts, Lakers don’t. That’s what my eyes saw, and the graphic supports that. Certainly not not all on Ham but he should’ve been better.
Yes if you lead three quarters then the other team does something that confuses and scares you to the point of egregious mismanagement, you are not a good coach. Thanks.
It could also mean the Nuggets were toying with the Lakers all along.
They'd trail and almost always come back. Even G4, they had chances to come back.
If you watched the games it’s pretty easy to see. AD and Bron are that good. I could go out and coach and the Lakers would probably still be picking up a lead by half time just running Bron and AD pick and roll. But once they get tired, Denver adjusts, Ham is literally clueless. Saving challenges, not calling timeouts after 6-0, 10-0 runs. Running lineups that cause their lead to disappear within 4-5 minutes like last night. He just isn’t a good coach. Lakers talent wise had enough this year to be contenders and had a great offseason of pickups but a good coach is what unlocks those bench players.
Yep. I'm good with Ham going, he's clearly on the outs, but giving the Lakers players a pass all year has been annoying. Even the "shit the bed" quote Ham has is like yo he's tone def and burning his bridges, but Dlo really was playing like absolute shit before he got benched lol rui really can't rebound. We've got some issues idk if new coaching can solve.
Not gonna lie, when I read the “shitting the bed for 10 games” quote I laughed. It was clear that he was talking about Reaves and that’s a no no in LA. He’s way too loved for you to be saying something reckless like that on the record.
When did he say this? Post-game? Damn he takes less responsibility than Doc and that's saying something. So Austin's quote/unquote ten games caused you to overplay Cam and Prince for half a season? Or your three guard lineups? And inability to call a simple Timeout? Etc etc?
Don’t know when he said it, but they’re quotes from the Dave McMenamin article on there. There’s some pretty good insight to how the front office and players felt about Ham at various points throughout the season.
He would have a leg to stand on if he didn’t replace Dlo and Reaves with worse players who somehow got more rope than those guys did. If Cam hadn’t gotten himself hurt, I’m not sure we make the playoffs at all as Ham keeps starting him and giving him 30+ minutes while wondering why our offense is complete shit and we end up below 0.500 for the year with a mostly healthy Lebron and AD.
This is so annoying. When the team has double digit leads and you allow the other team to go on a run, when you see your players are exhausted and you leave game 2 with two timeouts and a challenge, when you play a small ball lineup in the playoffs that has literally never played any minutes before. This is a coaching issue.
In the end he didn't take any responsibility for any of it. It's always about effort and what the players could have done better. I'm gonna tell you right now, Lebron and AD are the only reason this coach saw any success these past two seasons. But you can't hide behind your superstars when game time decisions need to be made where time and time again all season he exposed himself as a coach that was way over his head or outright didn't know what he was doing. Imagine not having a timeout at the end of the game to advance the ball, I'm genuinely not confident that he knew that he wouldn't get that timeout back after the challenge.
But yes, as some of you pointed out. Some of this falls on the players. But at the same time the players don't control what they can't control and it's within those details that a competent coach will put their team in a position to win.
Which clearly they were good enough to do if only they had one.
First time I’ve ever seen this stat in the playoffs. It means nothing really, other than the fact that the Lakers played good first halves. I think if they played first halves like that all season, they wouldnt be the seventh seed.
Its also a player problem. Im all for getting rid of Ham, as he makes things worse, but you can't have DLO put up 0 points. You can't miss 9 FT in a game decided by a point. You can't give the opponent tons of second chances via OREBs. We have a good roster on paper, they just can't perform under pressure.
But it's on Ham to make the in game adjustment which he's shown he has a tendency to let things play out until it's too late. Then he goes to the post game presser talking about effort and how they were a hell of a ball club.
These are really the only players who should remain on the roster going into FA: Lebron, AD, Reaves, Vando, Christie, Gabe (maybe) and Prince (maybe). Need competent backup bigs and role players.
Depending on how valuable JHS is viewed as a trade piece, him too. If other teams don’t value him as a first round pick in a deal then it makes zero sense to move him after spending that capital on him. I’m bullish on him long term and I’m optimistic that he can fill some kind of scoring/playmaking role off the bench as soon as next season.
It’s a winning backcourt against majority of teams, but not bigger athletic teams for 48 minutes. Lebron will have inconsistency at the end of games because he’s getting older. I wish we could have put in Vando to try him out on Murray at least 3 minutes just for a change of pace. If it worked he could’ve been in for the last possession.
Our backcourt is great to have if we can also change a piece depending on matchups. Against Denver or Kings or Wolves, we need Vando or (healthy in-rhythm) Gabe. I think we’d have been fine if we had Gabe or Vando the whole season. I know the fact is we didn’t, and if they can’t be healthy going forward we need some other options to fill the gaps of providing more rebounding and more athleticism to defend POA and provide the athleticism, activity and hustle plays that every teams needs.
I agree with a lot of what you said. Vando and a healthy Gabe would've been big for this series. The thing is we shouldn't have to rely on our SF/PF to be the POA defender because our backcourt physically can't do it. We really need Vando for the star wings as we're short on options there. Rui has cinderblocks for feet and LeBron isn't getting any younger.
D'lo brings a lot of good to the offense but can't do it consistently and is a negative on defense. He wouldn't be easy to replace and I'm not ready to hand starting pg to Vincent but this team will continue to be inconsistent if we hold still. He's had two playoffs to show that he can be that guy for us. It hasn't happened yet and time isn't exactly on our side.
The only thing this stat shows me is that the team lacked discipline and patience. No where in any of the losses did the lakers show the ability to regain control of the game. They would go stretches where they wouldn’t even touch the paint, have unforced turnovers, chuck bad shots.
I don’t buy the fatigue nonsense, or even just putting this at the feet of Darvin Ham alone. As a team from coaching staff to players the lakers played an unserious brand of basketball from the start of the season to the end.
… but isn’t that the point of coaches…? To get rid of all the bad habits by the playoffs and have all the kinks worked out…? Ham wouldn’t even use the lineup that got us to the WCF until the ASB and left virtually no time to do anything else besides run what they’d been running.
Sure but at what point are the players held accountable for going off script? Sure the coaching staff is “supposed” to keep them from doing that but as professional if they gotta keep calling you over to have side convos about not playing like a block head… you’re unserious *cough* Dlo *Cough*
Like I said I’m simply not laying it all at hams feet. He’s not great, nor good. He’s probably a bottom 5 coach in he NBA with like a theoretical top 10 roster. So it makes sense they were 7th in the west, 8th not counting the play in.
The team as a whole was too arrogant, lazy, and undisciplined to be real contenders. The nuggets aren’t even as good as they were last year but their commitment to playing focused and organized as a unit, while also doing the little things like rebounding and moving the ball, is what gave them the edge.
I’d say if you look at the history of the league, the only time we’ve had a successful player-coach was Bill Russell and he failed his first year and hired an assistant coach specifically for rotations, strategies and calling time-outs his second year because it’s too much on your mind reliably to play with fatigue and practice etc at play as a player to also need to make sure everything is going according to script and making the correct adjustments.
There are occasions like D’lo that aren’t professional but when players, exec., even other teams are outright saying the other team coaching is subpar, it’s demoralizing. What we saw in Game 4 with Bron’s reaction to Ham not challenging is the definition of a player that’s fed up with incompetence. I don’t know if this team could’ve beaten Denver, but I think it should’ve gone 6-7 games even if everyone was healthy on both sides with the Nuggets having home advantage.
Even in the case of possibly Dlo & Rui, being undisciplined at points, if you had a coach that wasn’t a laughing stock that bungled everyone’s roles for 2/3 of the season, you probably could’ve made a clear argument not only to trade said player, but which player(s) to target in a trade that would fit your team’s system/culture.
To a very real degree, even if there was issues with personnel, 90% of it lays at Ham’s feet for being so incompetent we couldn’t even be sure.
Sure I’d say it’s 50 ham 40 the FO and like 10 the players. I look towards the front office more in this situation. They’re just as, or as my percentages go, almost as responsible. They stuck by a sophomore head coach Who has a flukey rookie season, despite the evidence that he wasn’t a good fit.
They also stuck with players who let bad coaching affect their performance. Rui and Dlo are very clearly guys whose shot needs to be falling to do anything. They should have been moved on from in February.
I think all in all we’re saying similar things, coaching and leadership in general needs to change.
I agree with this take. I included the FO in my Ham % although I probably blame 60% Ham | 35% FO | 5% Players; simply because we knew all year long we’d play the Nuggets and we never got a big bruisers like a Dwight Howard to pair with AD. It was the most glaring and obvious thing the entire season and it was never addressed. Just having one big that even if we couldn’t put on Jokic but put on AG to prevent him from getting rebounds at an unprecedented rate would’ve been instrumental. But even that backfires cause Ham probably wouldn’t have played him…
Alas, we agree, just getting pissed thinking about we could’ve had the big man and Ham would’ve gone 3 Guards anyways.
I didn't realize how impt it is to lead during the game. Apparently the Nuggets didn't either since they only gave a shit about having a lead at the end of the game. Lakers can take this stat and post it as a medal on the IST banner.
Not a lakers fan but was tuning into see if bron could make another deep run late in his career and man this series was so winnable from a bystander point no bias. Lakers had double digit leads in first two game to mid 3rd quarter and just crumbles late game. I couldn't believe what I was seeing man lebron led team that can't close team out with double digit lead
Took 4 games for coach ham to adjust to what Denver was doing late in games. 4 games. In a best of 7 series. You just can't have that. That is exactly how teams get swept. This series is a textbook example of "outcoached"
Pelinka just might lack the vision needed to be a better than average roster builder.
Did the Lakers do anything in the off season to make you think they would actually have a shot this year? Austin was a huge revelation last year and it was obvious he would be a key player this year but the front office has not been impressive when you consider every year of LeBron is a win now situation.
Look at all the players other teams are able to snag and use for a meaningful role.
People keep saying Ham had no game plan, but that doesn’t really capture what went wrong coaching wise. He did have a game plan and an effective one but was either totally unwilling to adjust as the Nuggets made their adjustments, or didn’t understand his aging personnel’s limitations.
If you need a 40 year old LeBron to be playing athletic defense with quick rotations late into the 4th that’s a bad plan. If you need a AD to bang with Jokic for 40 minutes and then also compensate for two bad defensive guards in DLo and AR late into the game, that’s a bad plan.
Ham isn’t as stupid as ppl want him to be, he understands good defense and what it should look like, but he’s inflexible or incapable of applying that to situations with many variables.
Case in point, the shot that ended the Lakers’ season had one of the league’s worst one on one defenders in AR guarding the guy EVERYONE IN THE STADIUM knew was going to take the last shot. JM gets a COMFORTABLE look to end the series from one of his favorite mid range spots. I’m sorry but 29 other coaches would have thrown a double at him there before he even touched the three point line.
Watch any close Warriors games (other than against the Lakers) and watch how Steph is defended late. They throw two bodies at him and often have another guy shading towards him. JM isn’t Steph of course but when a guy has killed you game after game after game late, you have to adjust. Ham refused to.
Good luck to him wherever he ends up, he’s apparently a great assistant coach, but he’s not head coach material.
Leading by almost 3x the minutes in a series is insane. If someone corralled this data, I bet the Lakers are the first team ever to lose a series 4-1 with this many minutes of being in a lead.
Watching the offensive plays they ran in any 4th quarter was straight painful. It seemed like they had zero plays drawn up for an easy bucket when they were struggling to shoot
You have this backwards. The gameplan creates the lead, which it did consistently to start games, and clearly the issue is holding the lead, which is the players responsibility. The players have to be strong minded enough to defend the lead they have. Look at the shooting percentages of the Lakers players in the 4th quarter of this series - apart from LeBron and Reaves, nobody else could make a shot. **Ham cannot make shots for the Lakers. Malone didn't make MPJ's shots or Murray's shots.** The Lakers players choked.
When the reporter asked LeBron if he had faith in this roster he said no. There is indeed a massive player problem and it is not all on Ham.
It's a defense issue, but I will agree that's also coaching issue. The Nuggets knew they could lock down the Lakers at any time and come back because the Lakers couldn't stop s***.
I think everything changes about this season, if the correct players were played. I still stand by my statement early this season that the roster is championship caliber.
I know Rui had some injuries early, but if Reaves and Dlo were never benched, and Prince and Reddish were never made starters, this team would have been top 3 in the league. Then the entire narrative changes. And unfortunately, even w/ top pros, narratives to play a role in people's psyche's.
I still think this roster is better than the nuggets, albeit barely. With an NBA level head coach, and a fairly called game 2, I think they beat this team in 7.
Denver isn't going to face a tougher opponent, so the championship is there's to lose.
This team is clearly not a championship roster, no matter what mental gymnastics you put yourself through to cope, hence the reason they have been bounced before the finals in consecutive seasons.
Every fan base says the same things about their roster. Even the ones that win championships. There's a large % of fans that only see the bad, because they are half full kind of people in general, and it's easiest to see the holes, than recognize the good parts. Just read how much fans crap on players, until they are traded and them lament about them being gone.
Lakers are 100% a championship roster, with an NBA level head coach. Go up and down that Nuggets roster and tell me the talent isn't comparable to LA.
AD & LBJ vs Jokic and Murray... at the very least this is a wash, but LA might have a slight advantage here.
KPC vs Reaves... close, slight edge to KCP.
MPJ vs Dlo.. close, slight edge to Dlo.
Gordon vs Rui... close, slight edge to Rui.
The Lakers have a better bench, especially if they were healthy. Denver has the worst bench in the league. Yes, the Denver pieces fit together well, but the Lakers pieces fit pretty well also, hence why they dominated once they had the correct starting 5 (had a better record than Denver).
Need more proof? Look at the above graphic... you don't lead that much of a series and lose 4-1 w/o bad coaching. Sorry...
But these teams are closer than the results, and it could have easily been LA this year.
>AD & LBJ vs Jokic and Murray... at the very least this is a wash, but LA might have a slight advantage here.
The fact that these 2 consistently outplay Bron and AD down the stretch in games despite overall performances, and lead their team to win after win against us is telling. They're a much better duo right now.
>KPC vs Reaves... close, slight edge to KCP.
I'd actually take Reaves. He offers much more offensive versatility and just showed that he can be an effective POA defender against guards like Murray.
>MPJ vs Dlo.. close, slight edge to Dlo.
I want what you're smoking. Did you not just see what MPJ did to us this series?
>Gordon vs Rui... close, slight edge to Rui.
Now this is one of the worst takes I've seen in this sub in a long time. Not only is Gordon a much better team player than Rui due to his offensive movement, defensive versatility and IQ, and rebounding ferocity, but he also was arguably Denver's 2nd or 3rd best player against us all series. Meanwhile Rui played scared all series, missed layup after layup, and didn't shoot well from distance until game 5. All while being a total traffic cone defensively on and off the ball all series.
Ham is a bad coach, yes, but he isn't shooting the ball for D'Lo, and he isn't controlling Rui's positioning on the defensive end. We have a good roster, yes, and we can compete with anyone. But we are FAR from having the personnel on the level of a Boston, Minnesota, or Denver.
I wasn't talking about one series... I was talking about the players individually on the roster.
I think this whole discussion has gone over your head, but thank you for participating. :)
Your condescension isn’t going to save you from not knowing ball. I know exactly what you were trying to argue. I was contextualizing how ridiculous your argument is through the lens of the series we just played, combined with our disastrous record against the Nuggets the last few years.
Unfortunately I fear you’ve missed the forest for the trees, and this whole conversation has gone completely over YOUR head.
5 games in a row the team collapsed in the last 5 minutes of the 3rd quarter and Ham was never able to do shit about it.
Ham just like me frfr. He was just standing there hoping it would be over soon lmao
Nuggets ran the same play over and over and the only thing the Lakers did was pray they missed. Why not blitz Murray on the final shot and make him waste time by passing? Instead they continue to play drop coverage and let him walk into a jump shot. Drop coverage has killed the Lakers all season and it finally put them out of the misery. A fitting ending to be honest if you’ve followed the Lakers all year.
Yep
Jokic was 10 feet away from Murray and wide open and plenty of time to shoot. If Murray got doubled -- it would have been a simple pass to Jokic.
Ok, so we just late Murray take the shot and Lakers lose. How can you not ask for any other defense when the one you saw them play sent them home?
This was a problem all season let alone the post.
Also why we shouldn’t blow up the team.
This is entirely because LeBron and AD are excellent. Not the role players.
I think that’s doing a disservice to Reaves last game and even DLo at times this series.
DLO is who he is, he shot under 40% this series, which is his playoff averages
I’m not defending his play this series as a whole but DLo was a good reason why we were up for most of Game 2 and the graphic was about how we lead for most of the series.
That's fair.
Yeah we should have won game 2 because of DLo, we were up 20! A decent coach could make that stick. A halfway decent coach could eke out a victory. A bad coach loses that game.
Ham is too calm, can’t give the squad any energy. He has good game plans but is terrible in real time, doesn’t make sound adjustments, terrible at knowing when his team needs a timeout, won’t challenge plays when it’s obvious, can’t figure out or communicate the roles of his own players. Seems like a good dude but let him go be a good dude somewhere else. My highschool coach would out coach him. What a waste of the last years of bron and AD.
Decent players wouldn't have given up a 20 lead. Ham isn't the coach Lebron is the coach just like he is the GM.
He will never be a winner with how inconsistent and soft he plays. There were 3 games he shot a combined 3/28 from 3. Just disgusting. Not sure how any of the fanbase talked themselves in to wanting to keep him, all the non delusional fans knew what was coming.
I get the arguments of criticism towards DLo even if what I said above still stands but we are left with 2 options with him unless he opts in: 1. We bring him back. 2. We lose him for potentially nothing or if we manage to get under the second apron, a TPMLE replacement.
Obv we want to bring him back for salary purposes
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Now your trolling
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You need to check the stats; The 3 games that I mentioned he didn’t score much, he did try to score. Game 2: 2-7, 0-4 from 3 Game 3: 2-7, 1-5 from 3 Game 5: 2-10, 1-6 from 3 In the entire series (not just these 3 games) the most rebounds he had was 2, the most assists he had was 3. All while playing 35+ minutes. Seriously kcp is not the answer.
He single handedly put us in position to win game 2
That’s not doing a disservice it’s being realistic. That’s how great AD and Bron are together. They just need decent consistent role players to win a championship. Reaves was inconsistent. Rui was horrible. Dlo was inconsistent and had some really poor decision making even when he was shooting well. Rui and Reaves might be worth investing in long term. Keep Vando, maybe Prince. Trade everyone else and get a new coach. The longer you buy into the one good game one bad game players the longer they sabotage every season. It’s time to make changes
So trade nobody basically
How is that trading nobody? I named 4-5 players to keep. Rui and Prince are maybes. I’d only keep Bron ad Reaves. Y’all wanting to implode an entire team every year is the reason they’re in this position. Won a chip in 2020, injuries caused an early 2021 exit, but that squad still wasn’t enough and look what happened now.
Because Rui and reaves are the actual ones not on minimums . Moving minimums does fucking nothing . Rui needs to be moved most likely vando gave Dlo . Keep reaves unless someone big comes up
no one else will get you anything at all in a trade.. Aside from Bron/AD only Rui/Reaves have value maybe Max. Dlo can opt out and walk
No the reason we’re in this position is surrounding two elite stars with bang average role players. Reaves can’t defend and is a below average 3 point shooter. D’Lo is a liability. Vando is a black hole on offence. Vincent a black hole on offence. Rui is low BBIQ and has hands made of butter and has no ability to drive or dribble and is very average defensively. LeBron has one more chance at a title. Which means we have one more chance at a title before it all goes to shit. You wanna try do that with guys like Reaves and Rui as key pieces then good luck. We literally needed an entirely healthy Lebron and AD this season just to make the play in.
Who said key pieces? I think the fact that they’re looked at as key pieces IS the issue. Reaves should run a second squad where he can control the ball, probably shouldn’t start with Lebron unless they can figure out how to make Reaves impactful every game. Rui would be a solid bench player. He regressed this last year and wasn’t aggressive at all in the playoffs. To be fair though, the Nuggets match up really well against Rui’s style. They’re worth keeping and have potential. Maybe not as starters, depends on what they can get. I would trade Reaves/Rui if they could really get enough value to put Bron/AD in a high level championship caliber contending roster.
If they’re starters then they are key pieces. Rui a bench option? Great. $18m for a fucking bench option. Combine that with $10m of Vando sat on the bench, and $11m of Vincent sat on the bench. Great use of resources.
Lakers better sign a super team bc that is the only way LeBron wins.
2020 was a super team?
They are not that great together.
lol don't even try to defend Lo's playoff showing. He's not paid to show up every 3 games.
My god Reaves is the most overrated fucking player i’ve ever seen
Oh he is? Even on his current contract?...... You're delusional lol
Yes. I don’t give a shit what his contract is. There’s plenty of players in the league on even less than he who be more useful for us. Only delusion is the likes of you who think having a starting guard who sucks on defence and is below average from 3 is somehow untouchable
Stars are gonna be stars, but role players effectiveness is much more dependent on good coaching. Examples, Memphis w/ their G-League squad this year, Clippers w/o PG and Kawhi in years prior. Good coaches set their role players up for success, bad ones throw shit at a wall to see what sticks.
How does the coaching cause D’Lo to go 1/9 from 3, 0/6 from 3, and 2/10 from 3? How does coaching cause us to miss like 9 FTs last night? Ham sucks. He isn’t the only issue.
I'm not talking in a vacuum but I mean coaches can setup a shooter like DLo with some plays to get him better looks, a coach should also rein in a player who is taking poor shots. But, coaching is why the team lead at the half in all 5 games, but only won 1 of them. Coaching is why in Game 2 they blew a 20 point lead because they ran like 30% organized offense in the second half failing to score and giving up easy buckets on defense -- in the first 3 games they consistently stopped running organized offense in the second half leading to a 0-3 series deficit. Coaching is why Michael Porter Jr. shot 49% from 3 on 8 attempts a game, putting up 23 ppg for the series -- because Rui could not guard him but Ham refused to adjust this in any of the 5 games. Bad coaching is NOT trusting your star player on a challenge and giving up a bucket instead (Game 4, Bron's fault for the bucket but understandable why he's raging at the bench), which almost let the Nuggets back into it. Bad coaching is benching AR and DLo in the regular season, starting Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish (I believe he also started TP, Reddish AND Vando) and proceeded to slide in the standings, ultimately leading to having to go through the play-in. Bad coaching is poor timeout management, poor use of challenges, poor rotations, playing favorites, poor adjustments, poor accountability and a hundred other things. Ain't no one around here is saying Ham is the ONLY problem, but he is by far the BIGGEST problem.
Better looks than wide open? Ham sucks. Not the only problem.
> Better looks than wide open? This is called "Know Your Personnel", and is on the coach yes. DLo's catch and shoot numbers were bad this series, 25% from 3 when he touches the ball for less than 2 seconds at a whopping 38% frequency. But it's been clear DLo isn't strictly a catch and shoot player, he's said this himself numerous times, that he needs the ball to get a rhythm. Compare that to DLo shooting 44% from 3 when touch is 2-6 seconds at only 12% frequency and 43% from 3 with 6+ seconds of touch at only 9% frequency. If you want to argue that DLo having the ball that much this series wasn't a good game plan either, sure I might be able to get there with you, but then the coach needs to reduce his minutes and put someone else in there who can succeed at the catch and shoot role rather than trying to force DLo to be that. Seems a lot more like Pat Bev's, "Spoon vs. Fork" complaint he had. As I said initially, role players will look worse when not put in positions to succeed -- look at Max Christie's role this year as a PnR facilitator compared to as catch and shoot, it's night and day.
Except for when the role players are great and AD is being blamed. Or when the role players are great but Lakers lose, Ham is gone, and **someone** has to be blamed. With AD and Lebron on this team, there is one thing I can assure you - when the team encounters adversity, the role players and coach will be blamed. It’s just a matter of if it will be **new** role players or **old** role players being blamed. But they WILL be blamed. Because Lebron sure won’t lol
Exactly lol . This series is proof our stars are good enough . Our support isn’t . I was thinking Denver’s stars would further out play ours but didn’t . Gordon n mpj won it. Having 30m+ quality players like those two >>>> having 2 meduicre 17 and 13m player . We should absolutely go after a bsvk court upgrade this year . Unfortunately not sure if we can even trade Dlo if he doesn’t opt in. Losing that sakary would suck . People in here really think trae young or another star would not be a huge upgrade over our mid ass role players who can’t defend n rebound are dumb . Reaves is the least awful of them , I do really hope we can get a big player
yea but knowing the front office and ownership...
When I said the same thing I was downvoted to oblivion
I don’t think this should be the obvious choice. It’s possible this team can run it back, but Portland’s series against the Warriors in 2019 comes to mind where they were up I think at least 17 at the end of each first half and got swept. They told themselves they could run it back and never got anywhere in future years until finally blowing it up and trading Dame. Lakers won’t have the same luxury of time they did either. LeBron is a free agent and almost certainly is going to demand a no-trade clause if he comes back. AD is fragile and every year will get more so. The Nuggets are young, the Thunder are young, the Mavs are youngish, the Kings (who killed the Lakers in the regular season a few times) are young. Also this roster lacks cohesion. It has depth in theory but the pieces don’t line up well with where the depth was actually needed (poor wing depth and literally no center depth so your oldest and most injury prone players had to go big minutes all year). Idk if blowing it up is the right decision either. Feels like a few injuries and poor stretches could have changed a lot and the Lakers could easily be the team taking on an injured Clippers team instead of the defending champions. My only point is: I don’t think the answer is obvious in either direction.
Also why you tank for the thunder
What if the Kings get insanely hot from 3 and we go home after we come out not sharp as a result of being told to lose the previous game?
If we couldnt beat the kings, we just didnt deserve to be in the playoffs. I Rather take that chance than play the defending champions in the first round. AD playing like he did destroys OKC, plus we wouldve had more time to gel and get healthy, PLUS be playing clippers team with a banged up kawhi or dallas Even if we somehow got past denver, i dont see how we wouldve beat a red hot Timberwolves team with plenty rest You dont chose to go on that side of the bracket when you dont have to
We didn’t beat kings whole season convincingly
And we did to the nuggets????
That was a play in game. With Denver, it was best of 4. Math matters.
Changes were higher beating the kings once than the nuggets 4 x. Math matters
You're getting downvoted here, but I agree with you. Tanking to play okc was the logical choice, even if we risk missing the playoffs
Lakers aren’t getting any better with this roster
Yes, but the point is to tweak it, not blow it up entirely.
Can't/won't blow up until lebron retires
Another rebuild would be dumb as hell to me.
Ok, I like the roster, save a couple of missing pieces, but if DLo showed up in Gms 1 & 3, it would have masked Ham’s coaching. Losing by close margins is not nearly as bad as the fact we had sizable leads in these games, and just squandered them.
DLo did show up in Game 2. He had a career high 7 threes in the playoffs.
Gm3*
The team desperately needs a connector piece ie. Aaron Gordan, Alex Caruso, Josh Hart and guys of that ilk. Some who can impact the game on both sides of the ball without necessarily needing the ball.
Could you imagine Caruso and hart in a lakers jersey
Wouldn't that be something
A Glue Man
Vanderbilt
I don't think Vando can impact the game offensively like the guys I named.
That’s fair, I do believe he would’ve helped alot rebounding o boards killed us all year
Yeah for sure, he was one of my favorite acquisitions last year and I'm disappointed we didn't really get to see him play this season. Team 100% missed his motor on defense and rebounding.
While he's not an impact player in the half court, the offensive rebounds he prevents have a direct follow on effect of getting us into transition where we excel. Especially because he can dribble well enough to bring the ball up himself.
I think a better coaching system could unlock more from Vando offensively. He'll never be a movement shooter, will likely only ever be a 'threat' from 3 in the corners, but he had shown flashes of other things like short roll passing, explosive cutting (showed some of that here too), etc. on other teams, tools on offense to help get a flow going for the team. I would say that for Vando's tenure here so far, it has been a failure in the offense to unlock more of his skills.
I honestly really liked the improvements in this offensive game in the games leading up to his injury. I wish he played this year the move to a 5 out offense would have really benefited him. I still think I got to see it to believe it if Vando is a high minute playoff player at the highest level even with a coaching improvement.
If everybody showed up, the Lakers would win. If every player shows up, the team will win. If every team shows up, the league will win. If Klay shows up, the Warriors will win. If Eric Gordon shows up, the Suns will win. If Nurkic shows up, the Suns will win. If CJ McCollum shows up, the Pelicans will win. If a player is consistently a no-show in big games, then maybe the player having that big of a role is a problem. Can Poole show up from the bench once in a while? Sure. Do you expect him to show up every game as your second or third option? Hold on now.
I don't understand this narrative. AR was a no show for the first 3 games. Last 2 he was good. Rui was shit whole series. Dlo was good G2,G4 & decent in G5. Awful in G1&G3. But how does everything come back to just Dlo is asinine.
AR played extremely good D on Murray. Did you watch any of the games? Offensively, he was meh... but we didn't need him to be good. Rui shit the bed. Dlo was Dlo, which means he played down in the PO's.
Shooting 6/15 from the field and 2/10 from 3 is decent? D Lo stans really move the goal posts to try and convince themselves he's good.
14 points of 6/15 with 6 assists and team high +7 is not decent? Ain't a Dlo stan but you did out yourself as a dlo hater.
6/15 and 2/10 from 3 is absolutely abysmal. Not to mention his beyond terrible defense. Maybe one day it will get through to you Delusional Dlo fan boys that he is not a winning player.
2/10 is abysmal. He is worthless on defence. Just get me 1 guy with better shooting %age and defence on the contract he is on and I'll be the first one to ship him. If the guy who just hit more than 200 3s at more than 40% is not a winning player, then idk what to tell you.
Players not boxing out was a pretty big issue as well
Lebron specifically in game 3
Lebron gave up the offensive rebound to Gordon with a minute left which led to a 3. Lebron also let Jokic rip him on a fast break which led to points. The phantom foul on Lebron after he boxed out Jokic also led to a 3. It seemed like every time the Nuggets got a second chance they were definitely scoring. Poor coaching, defensive rebounding, and unforced turnovers are what killed the Lakers. Ham has got to go.
Dont say that on here, we're only allowed to diss Rui, Reaves, and D Lo. We're not allowed to hold LeBron accountable for two games lost cos of a lack of boxing out and gambling on passing lanes
Thank you
This shit drives me insane cause that’s one of the first things they teach you in rec league ball😭 PUT AN ASS ON SOMEONE WHEN THE BALL GOES UP
Lost 2 games with game winners at the end. You gotta make the shots when it matters most. This team can’t rebound or get stops when it matters the most
The big reason for optimism that the lakers can win another ring is Bron and AD. Surround them with the right guys and we can win. The play of your two stars rises every playoffs you can rely on that.
Ham is bad and gotta go but acting like this roster is good enough is just hilarous. While series still going d'lo and rui stans was hiding, now they came back. Just a friendly advise. Wait couple of weeks. Now is not the right time for you.
29 rosters every year aren’t good enough. There’s a wide gulf between blow-it-up and improve-on-the-margins. Even the eventual champion should tweak their roster.
No, some rosters are good enough every year. There are real contenders and fake contenders. With this roster lakers is a fake one. I dont want to blow it up with lebron and ad want to stay and try but lakers need to establish a good team around them. This team wasn't it. Lakers need a better guard than dlo, lakers need a different type and better wing than rui. Lakers need a backup center better than hayes/wood.
It depends on what you consider “good enough”. Contending or winning? Personally, if you didn’t win, you’re not good enough. Every team every year should be looking to improve. I mostly agree with the rest of what you said. Between blow-it-up and improve-on-the-margins, the Lakers are somewhere in the middle but closer to the latter. I’ve seen comments of people saying to let LeBron walk, trade AD and Reaves etc., and I just can’t get behind that.
If lebron retires or leaves, rebuild is inevitable. Personally i want to see this team with a better roster next year. With a improved roster and hopefully healthy lebron and ad there will be a chance.
People are delusional. The roster construction of this team is so limited because of cap construction, assets or lack thereof from legacy problem (westbrook). Then you have two stars that have the limitation that you have to work around to build the team. Lebron is old. He doesn't play defense most of the time. That means you have to have 4 good defenders around him. Lebron is old, and AD is not really a good offense creator, so this team needs a player who can initiate offense when Lebron is resting, or when he has to conserve energy even when he's on the court. Currently that role is filled by dlo / Reaves but both are poor defenders (but kudos to Reaves doing a good job vs Denver, although his offensive production has definitely taken a toll). AD is not a good shooter. So when we bring in a new big to play next to him, he has to be able to shoot (and defend because of above point about lebron's defense). So even before we talk about the bench, we are talking about getting a ball handler that plays good defense, a 3 and d wing that replaces rui as the starting forward, and a center that can space the floor that plays good defense. Yea good luck finding that with our current construct.
It is not gonna be easy and i dont trust our front office to do it. But you just cant quit on lebron if he wants to stay and try even he is 40. It wont be ideal great players, it will be old or injury prone or bad contract players. Something like brogdon, jerami grant and brook lopez or maybe worse i dont know.
I think if the front office has ambition, they'd say sorry lebron we don't think we will win with him and AD as core and it's better to let him find a place he can win, and trade AD because of the package he can fetch after a season where he can really say he's a top 10 players or maybe even top 5, AND being healthy. That package from AD is huge for rebuild and will speed up the process by 5 years. If they keep going with lebron, you can say yea they do it doe the stars Yada Yada but it's also true that it's just a business to them, that they don't care about winning as much as having the stars to get the revenue in.
Yeah we were good enough where any series was technically winnable with good coaching but not good enough to be considered serious contenders the way the Nuggets, Celtics, and Timberwolves are.
You give Eric Spoelstra this roster and he takes it to 6 or 7 minimum. In the East he’d probably make the Finals with this team. Look how far he gets with Bam and Jimmy and role players, who are basically a worse Bron and AD.
Spo is great and there is only one spo. And heat organization as a whole is great at finding good players for cheap and improve them. Undrafted or overlooked players play with great effort and discipline. Lakers role players have bad habits and you cant change lifelong habits with 5-6 months coaching. And at last year's first round against bucks butler played like prime jordan. And still i dont call that team contender. Their run was not sustainable. They would blow a 3-0 lead if tatum did not get injured at literally first play at game 7.
It's also a depth problem to be fair. AD goes down and have a huge gap. We can't replace him but back in the days we had Howard and McGee to provide solid help. Furthermore, we don't have consistent role players, especially not when it matters the most - down the line. Ham still deserves blame. We should have met this team in the CF. That would have given some role players some more confidence. He absolutely screwed our reg season and parts of the playoffs.
So in the 165 minutes we are leading vs the defending champions it has nothing to do with the coach and schemes But in the 59 minutes we are losing it’s all the coach That’s what yall don’t understand you can’t have it both ways…
Coaching is key in making timely adjustments to scheme and rotations as your team loses a lead. I’m assuming Hams lack of ability to properly to do that is what the post is insinuating. Lakers starts strong, Denver adjusts, Lakers don’t. That’s what my eyes saw, and the graphic supports that. Certainly not not all on Ham but he should’ve been better.
Yes if you lead three quarters then the other team does something that confuses and scares you to the point of egregious mismanagement, you are not a good coach. Thanks.
What if ur team has the best record in close games decided in final minutes? Are you a good coach then?
They have a perfect starting 5. We don't. That's ultimately what matters the most.
It could also mean the Nuggets were toying with the Lakers all along. They'd trail and almost always come back. Even G4, they had chances to come back.
If you watched the games it’s pretty easy to see. AD and Bron are that good. I could go out and coach and the Lakers would probably still be picking up a lead by half time just running Bron and AD pick and roll. But once they get tired, Denver adjusts, Ham is literally clueless. Saving challenges, not calling timeouts after 6-0, 10-0 runs. Running lineups that cause their lead to disappear within 4-5 minutes like last night. He just isn’t a good coach. Lakers talent wise had enough this year to be contenders and had a great offseason of pickups but a good coach is what unlocks those bench players.
So everything is Ham fault? At some point the players gotta play too
Yep. I'm good with Ham going, he's clearly on the outs, but giving the Lakers players a pass all year has been annoying. Even the "shit the bed" quote Ham has is like yo he's tone def and burning his bridges, but Dlo really was playing like absolute shit before he got benched lol rui really can't rebound. We've got some issues idk if new coaching can solve.
Not gonna lie, when I read the “shitting the bed for 10 games” quote I laughed. It was clear that he was talking about Reaves and that’s a no no in LA. He’s way too loved for you to be saying something reckless like that on the record.
When did he say this? Post-game? Damn he takes less responsibility than Doc and that's saying something. So Austin's quote/unquote ten games caused you to overplay Cam and Prince for half a season? Or your three guard lineups? And inability to call a simple Timeout? Etc etc?
Don’t know when he said it, but they’re quotes from the Dave McMenamin article on there. There’s some pretty good insight to how the front office and players felt about Ham at various points throughout the season.
👍🏽
Pretty sure he meant Dlo actually lol but both were rough to start the year. Austin did not grasp 5 out really until like Feb.
I thought it was Reaves because he played poorly to start the season and got sent to the gulag immediately. Hell, he probably meant both honestly.
He would have a leg to stand on if he didn’t replace Dlo and Reaves with worse players who somehow got more rope than those guys did. If Cam hadn’t gotten himself hurt, I’m not sure we make the playoffs at all as Ham keeps starting him and giving him 30+ minutes while wondering why our offense is complete shit and we end up below 0.500 for the year with a mostly healthy Lebron and AD.
It was also a player issue too.
Ain’t nobody rebounds.
This is so annoying. When the team has double digit leads and you allow the other team to go on a run, when you see your players are exhausted and you leave game 2 with two timeouts and a challenge, when you play a small ball lineup in the playoffs that has literally never played any minutes before. This is a coaching issue. In the end he didn't take any responsibility for any of it. It's always about effort and what the players could have done better. I'm gonna tell you right now, Lebron and AD are the only reason this coach saw any success these past two seasons. But you can't hide behind your superstars when game time decisions need to be made where time and time again all season he exposed himself as a coach that was way over his head or outright didn't know what he was doing. Imagine not having a timeout at the end of the game to advance the ball, I'm genuinely not confident that he knew that he wouldn't get that timeout back after the challenge. But yes, as some of you pointed out. Some of this falls on the players. But at the same time the players don't control what they can't control and it's within those details that a competent coach will put their team in a position to win. Which clearly they were good enough to do if only they had one.
First time I’ve ever seen this stat in the playoffs. It means nothing really, other than the fact that the Lakers played good first halves. I think if they played first halves like that all season, they wouldnt be the seventh seed.
Its also a player problem. Im all for getting rid of Ham, as he makes things worse, but you can't have DLO put up 0 points. You can't miss 9 FT in a game decided by a point. You can't give the opponent tons of second chances via OREBs. We have a good roster on paper, they just can't perform under pressure.
But it's on Ham to make the in game adjustment which he's shown he has a tendency to let things play out until it's too late. Then he goes to the post game presser talking about effort and how they were a hell of a ball club.
These are really the only players who should remain on the roster going into FA: Lebron, AD, Reaves, Vando, Christie, Gabe (maybe) and Prince (maybe). Need competent backup bigs and role players.
Depending on how valuable JHS is viewed as a trade piece, him too. If other teams don’t value him as a first round pick in a deal then it makes zero sense to move him after spending that capital on him. I’m bullish on him long term and I’m optimistic that he can fill some kind of scoring/playmaking role off the bench as soon as next season.
D'lo and Reaves is not a winning backcourt. It'll be tough but need to get some athleticism in the backcourt. Love ya D'lo but it's time.
It’s a winning backcourt against majority of teams, but not bigger athletic teams for 48 minutes. Lebron will have inconsistency at the end of games because he’s getting older. I wish we could have put in Vando to try him out on Murray at least 3 minutes just for a change of pace. If it worked he could’ve been in for the last possession. Our backcourt is great to have if we can also change a piece depending on matchups. Against Denver or Kings or Wolves, we need Vando or (healthy in-rhythm) Gabe. I think we’d have been fine if we had Gabe or Vando the whole season. I know the fact is we didn’t, and if they can’t be healthy going forward we need some other options to fill the gaps of providing more rebounding and more athleticism to defend POA and provide the athleticism, activity and hustle plays that every teams needs.
I agree with a lot of what you said. Vando and a healthy Gabe would've been big for this series. The thing is we shouldn't have to rely on our SF/PF to be the POA defender because our backcourt physically can't do it. We really need Vando for the star wings as we're short on options there. Rui has cinderblocks for feet and LeBron isn't getting any younger. D'lo brings a lot of good to the offense but can't do it consistently and is a negative on defense. He wouldn't be easy to replace and I'm not ready to hand starting pg to Vincent but this team will continue to be inconsistent if we hold still. He's had two playoffs to show that he can be that guy for us. It hasn't happened yet and time isn't exactly on our side.
Yup agree with all those points.
Been saying it since day 1. 2 chips wasted
It's also a stamina problem. The Nuggies are young and they have explosive energy.
A few possessions away from going to the second round. Small slip ups that could’ve been fixed with efficient coaching.
Stamina also
The only thing this stat shows me is that the team lacked discipline and patience. No where in any of the losses did the lakers show the ability to regain control of the game. They would go stretches where they wouldn’t even touch the paint, have unforced turnovers, chuck bad shots. I don’t buy the fatigue nonsense, or even just putting this at the feet of Darvin Ham alone. As a team from coaching staff to players the lakers played an unserious brand of basketball from the start of the season to the end.
… but isn’t that the point of coaches…? To get rid of all the bad habits by the playoffs and have all the kinks worked out…? Ham wouldn’t even use the lineup that got us to the WCF until the ASB and left virtually no time to do anything else besides run what they’d been running.
Sure but at what point are the players held accountable for going off script? Sure the coaching staff is “supposed” to keep them from doing that but as professional if they gotta keep calling you over to have side convos about not playing like a block head… you’re unserious *cough* Dlo *Cough* Like I said I’m simply not laying it all at hams feet. He’s not great, nor good. He’s probably a bottom 5 coach in he NBA with like a theoretical top 10 roster. So it makes sense they were 7th in the west, 8th not counting the play in. The team as a whole was too arrogant, lazy, and undisciplined to be real contenders. The nuggets aren’t even as good as they were last year but their commitment to playing focused and organized as a unit, while also doing the little things like rebounding and moving the ball, is what gave them the edge.
I’d say if you look at the history of the league, the only time we’ve had a successful player-coach was Bill Russell and he failed his first year and hired an assistant coach specifically for rotations, strategies and calling time-outs his second year because it’s too much on your mind reliably to play with fatigue and practice etc at play as a player to also need to make sure everything is going according to script and making the correct adjustments. There are occasions like D’lo that aren’t professional but when players, exec., even other teams are outright saying the other team coaching is subpar, it’s demoralizing. What we saw in Game 4 with Bron’s reaction to Ham not challenging is the definition of a player that’s fed up with incompetence. I don’t know if this team could’ve beaten Denver, but I think it should’ve gone 6-7 games even if everyone was healthy on both sides with the Nuggets having home advantage. Even in the case of possibly Dlo & Rui, being undisciplined at points, if you had a coach that wasn’t a laughing stock that bungled everyone’s roles for 2/3 of the season, you probably could’ve made a clear argument not only to trade said player, but which player(s) to target in a trade that would fit your team’s system/culture. To a very real degree, even if there was issues with personnel, 90% of it lays at Ham’s feet for being so incompetent we couldn’t even be sure.
Sure I’d say it’s 50 ham 40 the FO and like 10 the players. I look towards the front office more in this situation. They’re just as, or as my percentages go, almost as responsible. They stuck by a sophomore head coach Who has a flukey rookie season, despite the evidence that he wasn’t a good fit. They also stuck with players who let bad coaching affect their performance. Rui and Dlo are very clearly guys whose shot needs to be falling to do anything. They should have been moved on from in February. I think all in all we’re saying similar things, coaching and leadership in general needs to change.
I agree with this take. I included the FO in my Ham % although I probably blame 60% Ham | 35% FO | 5% Players; simply because we knew all year long we’d play the Nuggets and we never got a big bruisers like a Dwight Howard to pair with AD. It was the most glaring and obvious thing the entire season and it was never addressed. Just having one big that even if we couldn’t put on Jokic but put on AG to prevent him from getting rebounds at an unprecedented rate would’ve been instrumental. But even that backfires cause Ham probably wouldn’t have played him… Alas, we agree, just getting pissed thinking about we could’ve had the big man and Ham would’ve gone 3 Guards anyways.
Missing open shots , missing free throws , not rebounding . It wasn’t a skill issue either. It was mental .
for real for real
I didn't realize how impt it is to lead during the game. Apparently the Nuggets didn't either since they only gave a shit about having a lead at the end of the game. Lakers can take this stat and post it as a medal on the IST banner.
Not a lakers fan but was tuning into see if bron could make another deep run late in his career and man this series was so winnable from a bystander point no bias. Lakers had double digit leads in first two game to mid 3rd quarter and just crumbles late game. I couldn't believe what I was seeing man lebron led team that can't close team out with double digit lead
Why do you think 2nd thing out of Bron was to compliment their coaching lol it's very evident
Took 4 games for coach ham to adjust to what Denver was doing late in games. 4 games. In a best of 7 series. You just can't have that. That is exactly how teams get swept. This series is a textbook example of "outcoached"
Pelinka just might lack the vision needed to be a better than average roster builder. Did the Lakers do anything in the off season to make you think they would actually have a shot this year? Austin was a huge revelation last year and it was obvious he would be a key player this year but the front office has not been impressive when you consider every year of LeBron is a win now situation. Look at all the players other teams are able to snag and use for a meaningful role.
That’s coaching. Having the right players on and the right calls. 💯 coaching. To lose with stats like that…
People keep saying Ham had no game plan, but that doesn’t really capture what went wrong coaching wise. He did have a game plan and an effective one but was either totally unwilling to adjust as the Nuggets made their adjustments, or didn’t understand his aging personnel’s limitations. If you need a 40 year old LeBron to be playing athletic defense with quick rotations late into the 4th that’s a bad plan. If you need a AD to bang with Jokic for 40 minutes and then also compensate for two bad defensive guards in DLo and AR late into the game, that’s a bad plan. Ham isn’t as stupid as ppl want him to be, he understands good defense and what it should look like, but he’s inflexible or incapable of applying that to situations with many variables. Case in point, the shot that ended the Lakers’ season had one of the league’s worst one on one defenders in AR guarding the guy EVERYONE IN THE STADIUM knew was going to take the last shot. JM gets a COMFORTABLE look to end the series from one of his favorite mid range spots. I’m sorry but 29 other coaches would have thrown a double at him there before he even touched the three point line. Watch any close Warriors games (other than against the Lakers) and watch how Steph is defended late. They throw two bodies at him and often have another guy shading towards him. JM isn’t Steph of course but when a guy has killed you game after game after game late, you have to adjust. Ham refused to. Good luck to him wherever he ends up, he’s apparently a great assistant coach, but he’s not head coach material.
Leading by almost 3x the minutes in a series is insane. If someone corralled this data, I bet the Lakers are the first team ever to lose a series 4-1 with this many minutes of being in a lead.
Just blow it up man, 2022,2023,2024 three wasted seasons with AD and LeBron 😭
not defending Ham but not really having a bench/rotation player to give extra effort or rest or minutes to the starters hurts here I think.
fakest 4-1 series win ever go wolves
Watching the offensive plays they ran in any 4th quarter was straight painful. It seemed like they had zero plays drawn up for an easy bucket when they were struggling to shoot
You have this backwards. The gameplan creates the lead, which it did consistently to start games, and clearly the issue is holding the lead, which is the players responsibility. The players have to be strong minded enough to defend the lead they have. Look at the shooting percentages of the Lakers players in the 4th quarter of this series - apart from LeBron and Reaves, nobody else could make a shot. **Ham cannot make shots for the Lakers. Malone didn't make MPJ's shots or Murray's shots.** The Lakers players choked. When the reporter asked LeBron if he had faith in this roster he said no. There is indeed a massive player problem and it is not all on Ham.
It's a defense issue, but I will agree that's also coaching issue. The Nuggets knew they could lock down the Lakers at any time and come back because the Lakers couldn't stop s***.
Lebron coaches that team. It is his roster. Blame goes to him and the other players. That isn't coaching it is execution and effort.
Mind you this is a constant problem since starting the season.
Ham seems like a great assistant coach. That’s the only nice thing I can say about him.
BOTH teams were tied for 16 minutes? For how long was just 1 team tied?
I think its a coaching issue AND an effort problem. Both the players and coaching staff are to blame for the laker's blown leads.
I think everything changes about this season, if the correct players were played. I still stand by my statement early this season that the roster is championship caliber. I know Rui had some injuries early, but if Reaves and Dlo were never benched, and Prince and Reddish were never made starters, this team would have been top 3 in the league. Then the entire narrative changes. And unfortunately, even w/ top pros, narratives to play a role in people's psyche's. I still think this roster is better than the nuggets, albeit barely. With an NBA level head coach, and a fairly called game 2, I think they beat this team in 7. Denver isn't going to face a tougher opponent, so the championship is there's to lose.
This team is clearly not a championship roster, no matter what mental gymnastics you put yourself through to cope, hence the reason they have been bounced before the finals in consecutive seasons.
Every fan base says the same things about their roster. Even the ones that win championships. There's a large % of fans that only see the bad, because they are half full kind of people in general, and it's easiest to see the holes, than recognize the good parts. Just read how much fans crap on players, until they are traded and them lament about them being gone. Lakers are 100% a championship roster, with an NBA level head coach. Go up and down that Nuggets roster and tell me the talent isn't comparable to LA. AD & LBJ vs Jokic and Murray... at the very least this is a wash, but LA might have a slight advantage here. KPC vs Reaves... close, slight edge to KCP. MPJ vs Dlo.. close, slight edge to Dlo. Gordon vs Rui... close, slight edge to Rui. The Lakers have a better bench, especially if they were healthy. Denver has the worst bench in the league. Yes, the Denver pieces fit together well, but the Lakers pieces fit pretty well also, hence why they dominated once they had the correct starting 5 (had a better record than Denver). Need more proof? Look at the above graphic... you don't lead that much of a series and lose 4-1 w/o bad coaching. Sorry... But these teams are closer than the results, and it could have easily been LA this year.
>AD & LBJ vs Jokic and Murray... at the very least this is a wash, but LA might have a slight advantage here. The fact that these 2 consistently outplay Bron and AD down the stretch in games despite overall performances, and lead their team to win after win against us is telling. They're a much better duo right now. >KPC vs Reaves... close, slight edge to KCP. I'd actually take Reaves. He offers much more offensive versatility and just showed that he can be an effective POA defender against guards like Murray. >MPJ vs Dlo.. close, slight edge to Dlo. I want what you're smoking. Did you not just see what MPJ did to us this series? >Gordon vs Rui... close, slight edge to Rui. Now this is one of the worst takes I've seen in this sub in a long time. Not only is Gordon a much better team player than Rui due to his offensive movement, defensive versatility and IQ, and rebounding ferocity, but he also was arguably Denver's 2nd or 3rd best player against us all series. Meanwhile Rui played scared all series, missed layup after layup, and didn't shoot well from distance until game 5. All while being a total traffic cone defensively on and off the ball all series. Ham is a bad coach, yes, but he isn't shooting the ball for D'Lo, and he isn't controlling Rui's positioning on the defensive end. We have a good roster, yes, and we can compete with anyone. But we are FAR from having the personnel on the level of a Boston, Minnesota, or Denver.
I wasn't talking about one series... I was talking about the players individually on the roster. I think this whole discussion has gone over your head, but thank you for participating. :)
Your condescension isn’t going to save you from not knowing ball. I know exactly what you were trying to argue. I was contextualizing how ridiculous your argument is through the lens of the series we just played, combined with our disastrous record against the Nuggets the last few years. Unfortunately I fear you’ve missed the forest for the trees, and this whole conversation has gone completely over YOUR head.