Lonnie Walker IV's moment emblematic of Lakers' culture of trust, confidence

This Lakers season has been defined by resilience, and succeeding in one's role when the opportunity presents itself. There has been no better example than Lonnie Walker IV's huge game four.

It takes a resilient bunch to start where this Lakers season began and somehow wind up a single win from the conference finals. It takes real trust to go to someone who had fallen out of the rotation as the season was slipping away and tell him, “hey, you mind trying to stick with the greatest offensive backcourt the league has ever seen?” Hell, it takes arguably more trust to fall out of the rotation yet stay ready knowing that your chance would come.

Lonnie Walker IV’s moment Monday was incredible in its own right — a historic performance we hadn’t seen since Kobe Bryant. He may have actually ended the Warriors dynasty and, in doing so, perfectly encapsulated this Lakers season.

Walker’s season had, to that point, been a pretty frustrating experience. At the start of the year, he was a rare bright spot in an otherwise dreary 2-10 start. Sure, he was enjoying some individual success, but as he told me at my last gig, the focus was still trying to improve a team that was clearly going nowhere.

Then, Dennis Schröder got healthy and Walker went from ample time on the ball as a guard to all of a sudden trying to pretend he was a three-and-d wing because the Lakers had basically no one else who could even try to fill that role. It didn’t go well and all that early season momentum was gone.

As if that wasn’t enough, Walker then got hurt essentially as the season was turning around and had to sit on the sidelines for most of this miraculous run, waiting, hoping to be a part of whatever the hell is going on right now.

Then…

As incredible as Walker’s fourth was, none of it happens without Darvin Ham’s indelible trust in his guys. As various roles have shifted over the course of the season, Lakers players have consistently credited Ham for his upfront communication and tangible belief that the time would come when they could help again.

In other words, Ham is probably quite a bit better at coaching than, say, some idiots online.

As soon as the game ended, Walker was immediately swarmed by teammates who watched him stay ready. In the hours that followed, Walker’s name has been trending on social in no small part because of posts from those teammates, all echoing a message of respect for the professionalism that allowed last night to play out the way it did.

“Staying ready” is a nice cliché to repeat after nights like game four but in practice it takes a lot to actually execute, and it extends well beyond just that player maintaining focus. Hell, look at the team the Lakers now hold a 3-1 lead over now, where all series we’ve seen headline after headline about Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga’s annoyance with their roles.

Up and down the roster, it takes consistent reminders and a real effort to make someone on the outside of the rotation looking in still feel like they matter. Just listen to James and Davis talk about the message they’ve had for Walker all season:

The team-wide celebration we saw was the last piece of the cultural puzzle. Obviously, everyone was excited having won that game and earned a stranglehold of the series, but it also felt like everyone wanted to celebrate Walker specifically. They knew what he had to do to stay focused. They knew how they’ve helped.

At various points over the last couple months we’ve seen Walker try to shoot himself back into the rotation. But he really earned this opportunity by focusing on the little things first and growing from there. All last night we heard Stan Van Gundy look back on the garbage time where he thought Walker showed he can play the right way leading to him getting the call when the minutes mattered. If he and we are able to notice that, you bet your ass it was caught in film room sessions.

Again, trust must be reciprocated. Walker trusting that maybe if he does those small things well pays off for him and the coaching staff rewarding him for doing so paid off for us all. That kind of culture can be the difference between postseason success and falling short of expectations.

I don’t mean to keep picking on the Warriors, but their season started with Draymond Green punching Poole in the face and that video getting leaked for everyone to see. None of that exactly screams trust, to me, and when you look at their minutes last night, it doesn’t exactly feel like Steve Kerr believes in anyone outside of Stephen Curry, Green, Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins.

Again, if I can notice that, it’s probably safe to assume that tension is felt in their suddenly quiet locker room.

It takes a real resilience to push through all the Lakers have this season. The summer that preceded this campaign was defined by the move Rob Pelinka didn’t make, especially seeing as the rest of his roster was seemingly put together with a Russell Westbrook trade in mind. The season started as hopeless as you’d expect. In order to merely make the play-in tournament, the Lakers had to sprint to the finish line without James for upwards of a month.

Getting here felt like a miracle, but the Lakers haven’t let themselves consider that enough.

For the Lakers to turn things around as they have, it’s taken everyone. They’ve all had to stay ready for several months now to merely have this opportunity. The Lakers are that rare team nowadays that can actually say no one believed in them and have that sentiment be true. Walker’s moment last night was great in its own right, but when you consider everything that went into it both on the court and off, it was a perfect encapsulation of everything the Lakers have been building toward, and proof of concept they can continue to build on.