LOS ANGELES— Coming out of a tense off-season, the Lakers as a franchise, they’ve collectively pinned their hopes on a new leader’s ability to galvanize a group whose collective vibes and performance have both plummeted about as far as they can go in the NBA.
Few humans can wield both the gravity necessary to alter the oversized egos of the league’s pre-eminent superstars and the sensibility to keep them by your side. Darvin ham, through experience and willpower, has this special thing. He is apparently loved and respected by all his encounters; an impossible balance for most mere mortals.
However, like everything else in Lakerland these days, nothing purple and gold can stay. The autonomous voice of reason began to quiver and their guiding light began to flicker.
Get out of a loss for the team with the second-worst record In the league, the Lakers are now 13-19 and Darvin Ham is showing his warts as a rookie head coach.
Despite being handed a brutally under-talented and ill-fitting roster, Ham made some real mistakes that only made things worse. Among a number of relatively concerning trends – including impossibly small lineups and mismatched guard pairs – one issue in particular stands out as both are within Ham’s domain as team commander-in-chief. and being obviously harmful: poor timeout management.
In last night’s loss to the Hornets, the Lakers ran away to tie the game in the half. But after two and a half minutes of play, the Lakers had surrendered a 10-0 deficit that rose to 16 and required a mad dash in the dying moments of the game to erase it. Somewhat counterintuitively, when you feel the tangible import of a particularly big dunk or impressive chase block, all points count equally no matter when they come into play.
After the loss, Austin Reaves cited runs like these as being central to the Lakers loss.
“The thing is, it comes down to the races we give up. I think a lot of times teams go 10-0 pretty quickly against us. If you can handle them like a 10-4, or an 8-4, or an 8-2, instead of giving up a 10-0, 12-0, then that’s not so bad, obviously. I think when things are bad we have to find a way to stop the bleeding,” Reaves said.
But while Austin made it clear he didn’t blame his coach for it – “It’s up to us as players, we have to figure it out as the game unfolds,” he said. – he declared – there is a person on the Lakers who actually has the ability to “mechanically stop the bleeding” in the rules of the game.
When I asked Darvin Ham about his philosophy on using the timeout, he went through a relatively long list sometimes antagonistic factors. First, Ham cited his team’s energy as being central to his decision-making.
“I look at the energy. This is a difference between competitive errors and unforced errors. I look towards the energy of my team, the players, and that’s usually what drives it,” Ham said. “For me, it’s about body language, it’s about energy.”
However, Ham also cited the inherent rarity of time-outs – “you only get seven” – and the need to keep one over time to have a chance of contesting a call or building a play as reasons. to avoid a “knee-twitch reaction. Ham stressed the need to “give your team a chance to rally and react in the moment.”
Still, if the primary consideration is energy and effort, then Ham should have called a timeout in the early stages of the Hornets’ 10-0 run to open the third quarter.
After giving up a live turnover that led to a transition three for Gordon Hayward, the Lakers … gave up a live turnover that led to a transition three for Terry Rozier.
And as Ham said, it’s one thing to make mistakes, but it’s another when those mistakes aren’t forced or caused by lack of effort. In that second triple, the Lakers failed to come back early or win the ball back in transition, the exact kind of self-inflicted injury that Ham has repeatedly said he is keen on in the eliminator.
Now down six, Ham could have easily called a timeout. Instead, Hayward shoves LeBron on the loose ball rebound and finds LaMelo Ball alone under the basket for an uncontested layup.
Finally, after giving up eight straight points to the (then) 8-24 Hornets, Ham called a timeout, presumably to reinstall his team.
While the failure to stop the bleeding in time may not have cost the Lakers more than a bucket, those point-costing hesitations add up over an 82-game, 48-minute season and amount to losses.
In fact, Ham admitted to mishandling the Lakers’ timeouts during their home-and-away loss to the Celtics December 13. After that match, he said, “I just try to deal with timeouts. I could have done a better job in some cases and used my timeouts faster, but you know, that’s on me.
Although the problem in this match is a lack of rest for its stars, not the quality of their play, hesitation under fire remains the central problem for Ham’s decision-making in the game.
Being an NBA head coach is an exceptional challenge. In addition to the personality management that comes with the job, a great head coach must also be an elite tactician, which requires an entirely distinct skill set. To put this requirement into perspective, as another LeBron coach explains“A basketball coach makes 150-200 critical decisions in a game, which I think is only matched by a fighter pilot.”
While that coach – David Blatt – faltered in Cleveland due to his inability to handle the former challenge, Ham struggled in his first season at the helm with the latter.
It may be growing pains, but as LeBron said in his own postgame press, the Lakers can’t afford any mistakes because they have “zero margin for error.” Ham’s hesitation may resolve over time as he acclimates to the new role of NBA head coach. However, the Lakers are running out of time to get the most out of their 2022-23 season.
If they’re going to turn things around, they’ll need Ham to coach like a Top Gun grad, not just a trainee.
Cooper is a lifelong Laker fan who also covered the Yankees at SB Nation’s Pinstripe Alley. No, he’s not a Cowboys fan either. You can follow him on Twitter at @cooperhalpern. All quotes obtained first hand unless otherwise stated.
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