The Lakers' current problem might just be Darvin Ham

This has been a pretty disastrous start to the year, and the players are starting to notice.

Ask anyone who has watched the Lakers consistently this season to point out one consistent theme and they’re likely to point to Anthony Davis’ stellar play, LeBron James continuing to beat the crap out of Father time, or Darvin Ham standing there with his hands in his pockets as the other team goes on a run.

Sure, most coaches call timeouts to break the other team’s rhythm, bring focus back to a deficiency, bring awareness to advantage that needs to be hammered, or change personnel, then draw up a play and hope the flow of the game goes in their direction. And sure, not doing so has led to multiple double-digit runs against the Lakers this season.

But also, pockets are so cozy.

If we weren’t supposed to use them, then why did ol’ Levi Jean bless us with them in the first place? And on the off chance the quarter ends or a tv timeout bails Ham out of sitting through a few more buckets before having to do something, he tells the guys to play harder, run faster, grit gritterer, then pat someone on the butt and wait for the next time he has do to something.

No, it’s been a weird season. Such a weird season that I can’t even answer the typical questions asked every year when I ask if I can put the Lakers game on one of the TVs for work Christmas Day, starting with, “so how are they (the Lakers) this year” and ending with “so what’s your stance on LeBron and Ch-…” oh would you look at that my kid is… doing kid things I have to pay close attention to.

When I was asked about the Lakers this year, however, I had no idea how to answer. I think the Lakers are good. But also, the red flags are really red, and most are flying over the coaching staff’s heads.

On one hand, you have that In-Season-Tournament run where they played a completely different brand of basketball, seemed to actually and consistently care, and overwhelmed basically everyone they played.

On the other, you have almost everything that’s happened outside Silver’s cute little side project. Subtract the six IST wins from the Lakers’ record (the seventh doesn’t count towards anything because, reasons!) and the Lakers would be sitting at 10-15. A .400 winning percentage puts them just above the Memphis Grizzlies, 13th in the Western Conference.

How does a team fluctuate so viscerally between soul crushing and, well, soul crushing?

I don’t think you need to go much further than the head coach and coaching staff that, 31 games in, doesn’t seem to know the team’s identity. They seemed to find it during that tournament run, but, then left it in Vegas like a sweater they didn’t even mean to bring in the first place.

The Lakers are on their third chosen starting lineup (not forced by injury) and will be on their fourth when Ham wakes up from whatever nightmare led to this current group:

• To start the year, the group of D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves, Taurean Prince, LeBron James and Anthony Davis awkwardly tip-toed around each other as everyone tried to learn Ham’s new five-out system they’re gradually phasing out anyway.

• Then, after a three-game slide, Reaves was moved to a bench role at least in part to ensure he and Russell wouldn’t share the court.

• After a recent four-game losing streak, Russell went to the bench and was replaced by Jarred Vanderbilt.

There are explanations for each of these, well maybe not the last one.

With a little direction and without that stupid five-out system, the first group makes some sense — offensively. The second, again, is at least explicable and worked just fine until Russell started quiet quitting. The third one is an affront to basketball, sport, and humanity, itself.

The larger point here isn’t even about what each group brings to the table or takes off of it. It’s that the Lakers are headed by a coach who doesn’t seem to understand the roster, let alone how to optimize it. There aren’t consistent rules with lineups, and if they exist, they get broken by the next couple subs that come a few possessions too late.

On top of it all, Ham offered this explanation for why the starters haven’t worked (via Jovan Buha of The Athletic)

“I just think not allowing it to stagnate us,” Ham said. “If they’re trying to play off, Cam’s got to step up shooting with confidence or eat up that space on the drive. Collapse the defense once he touches the paint and try to find open man. Same thing for Vando. The ball hits him, you just can’t hold it and be confused. You just gotta move on to the next thing, whether it’s a pitch ahead and hit to its teammates, (dribble handoff), or shot goes off, go hunt down off an offensive rebound, get us some extra possessions.

“Just playing fast, man. Trying to be in rhythm, making quick decisions and doing things with force.”

(You thought I was kidding about the run faster part, huh)

Alright cool. So all the starters of a team with championship aspirations has to do to work together is, uh, hope that two of the five of them just magically turn into completely different players. Cool. Got it. Should work.

In two games, the starters have played 18 minutes together and currently boast a -20 net rating. It’s a tiny sample size but sometimes bad ideas are just bad. This was a bad one. It’s best to just pretend it didn’t happen and move on.

What really concerns me is what leads to it and that insane quote after it so predictably failed. Beyond that, what really really concerns me is the impact so many foundational changes are going to have on the locker room.

James’ trust in particular is of note here. Remember, getting swept in the conference finals last year might have been enough for some to high-five themselves. They took a season heading towards purgatory and won a couple playoff rounds. Not usually what the Lakers or Lakers fans consider resounding success, but sure. James, however, infamously mentioned retirement. He also said this (via Sports Illustrated, the not AI division):

"I don't like to say it was a successful year because I don't play for anything besides winning championships at this point in my career. I don't get a kick out of making a Conference appearance. I've done it a lot. It's not fun to me to not be able to be a part of getting to the Finals.”

So, coming off that disappointment, James was asked to buy into bringing that same core that got swept, a second-year head coach, and, most notably, the two-star model. Success was vital to keeping his eye off the market this season. As the losses pile up, and frustration mounts, James is either going to wonder about the struggling second-year head coach or hop on the trade machine.

Word around the league is some of that doubt has already started not only with James, but across the roster. Don’t just take my word for it.

On multiple occasions this season, players have wondered about Ham’s decisions, either directly or indirectly.

James had the viral clip earlier this season where he voiced his opinion about the five-out system. Then, more recently, he went viral for wondering about Ham’s lineup choices after a loss to the Chicago Bulls.

Here’s Reaves on his minutes restriction (after playing 36 minutes per game in last year’s playoffs) (via Dan Woike, L.A. Times):

“I mean, it’s hard, but it is what it is,” he said about his up-and-down minutes . “That’s what they decided. It’s not like nothing I can control, you know, I just got to play my minutes and do what I can do, you know, defensively, offensively on both ends. Just be aggressive. Play harder. Bring energy from the bench, off the bench.”

Honestly, who could blame players for going on run that took them from the depths of hell last season to the Western Conference Finals, buying into the notion of continuity coming into this season, and then finding out that, (a.) They’d be running a whole new offensive system and, (b.) The six guys played in that run have seen their roles jumbled and barely spent any time on the court together?

Just look at Reaves. He started last year playing behind Matt Ryan. Then, the Lakers traded Russell Westbrook and had no other real choice but to put the ball in his hands. He took the season and playoffs by storm and so far this year, he’s been benched and told he can’t play more than 30 minutes per game without a prior conversation, per sources.

Which brings me back to the crux of the issue here: Ham and his coaching staff have been firing mudball after mudball at the wall hoping something sticks that fits their ideologies when there’s plenty of data that speaks to the brand of basketball the Lakers should be playing. There’s also plenty of data on the kind of team you need to build around James and Davis. This very roster allows for both of those things!

Easily the most maddening part of this season isn’t the injuries, the inconsistent shooting, or even those hideous IST courts. No, when Jen finds me staring off into space, it’s almost always because of existential dread the Lakers have shown us their ceiling but then sprinted in the opposite direction of that ceiling.

Normally, when a team struggles it’s for a variety of reasons, and this isn’t necessarily the outlier that proves that rule, but this blame pie chart is pretty lopsided. Sure, “guys just need to play better” is Twitter’s usual response to anyone criticizing the coach, but when a coach’s decisions fly so far all over the map (remember that game where they played like 35 minutes of zone?), it’s hard to even ask for that.

I don’t think it’s realistic to demand Ham be fired. He’s mere months removed from that WCF run and the last thing Rob Pelinka is going to do is admit failure on a second head coach. I honestly don’t think it’s even fair to demand his firing, either. Ham does need to be better, though, and quite a bit better. To put this in the terms of his usual timeouts, he needs to coach, coachier.