Darvin Ham‘s position with the Lakers is in “serious peril” following the team’s elimination from the playoffs on Monday, according to Shams Charania, Jovan Buha, and Sam Amick of The Athletic. ESPN’s Dave McMenamin agrees, citing league sources who say that Ham’s head coaching job is “very much in jeopardy.”
The Athletic’s reporters and McMenamin both say that the Lakers will take a few days to review the situation and assess what went wrong this season before making a decision on Ham’s future.
Although the Lakers finished with more regular season wins (47) than they did a year ago when they made the conference finals (43), there was a sense that this year’s team lacked an “effective direction” from the coaching staff at times, per The Athletic, and there were people within the organization confused by the way that Ham used his starting lineup and rotation over the course of the season.
As both The Athletic and McMenamin detail, Ham used a series of starting groups earlier in 2023/24 that frequently featured players like Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish, often at the expense of players that the franchise viewed more as part of its core, such as Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, and D’Angelo Russell.
There was a sense that Prince and Reddish were given opportunities to play through their mistakes that Reaves, Hachimura, Russell, and others weren’t, per The Athletic, and some team sources suggested to ESPN that the Lakers would have finished with a better record – and a higher playoff seed – if they had stuck to a starting lineup of Reaves, Hachimura, and Russell alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis earlier in the season.
“The job of a coach is to make the best out of what you have,” a team source told McMenamin. “And he wasn’t doing that.”
Reporting from both The Athletic and ESPN also pointed to Ham’s response to a post-Game 2 comment from Davis (“We have stretches where we just don’t know what we’re doing on both ends of the floor”) as troubling. Rather than downplay – or even agree with – Davis’ comment, Ham took exception, praising his coaching staff and telling reporters that he would “agree to disagree” with his star big man.
Team sources told The Athletic that Ham’s rebuttal unnecessarily amplified Davis’ initial comment and questioned whether engaging in a back-and-forth with one of the franchise’s cornerstones was a good idea. A club source who spoke to McMenamin, meanwhile, was “confounded” by Ham’s lack of accountability and questioned the wisdom of praising the preparedness of his staff after the Nuggets had run their winning streak vs. the Lakers to 10 games.
According to The Athletic, the contract Ham signed in 2022 was a four-year deal worth approximately $5MM per season, so there are still two seasons left on it. If they make a coaching change, the Lakers would eat the remainder of that contract.
Classless- James walked off court without shaking hands, dude is a nothing.
It’s easy to seem like a nice guy when you win championships and go deep into the playoffs year after year. We’d all pretty happy. Now that LeBron is just like everyone else, he’s showing his true colors as a spoiled child and primadonna (not that those paying attention couldn’t tell before).
Dude is nothing but most competitive dude on that court. Shaking hands is for golfers.
It’s for people who aren’t self centred
It’s funny the people will pick at anything to tear this guy down. Jordan and Kobe punched team mates in the face but if we posted this same story about them with people would be say they are competitive and have a killer instinct and that’s why they didn’t do.
I still don’t understand how you don’t have a timeout left with four seconds on the clock to get a shot to tie the game or win with a three.
How could you put your team in that kind of a position?
Well he’s letting the players run the team when they jump up and down calling for a challenge 2 minutes earlier.
So what the heck is he doing out there.., coaching or listening to his players and what they want to do? Dude’s got to go and he’s got to go now.
As far as timeouts go, I think they burned one on AD’s injury and another on Lebron twisting his ankle. Another one was with like 3:30 left when his team was gassed and needed a breather. I think the announcers made reference to the thin air in Denver.
But yeah, he’s got to go. The Lakers win games in spite of him. Poor game planning, bad defensive strategies, no offensive plan, misuse of AD. I get that the supporting cast for Lebron and AD isn’t the best and they had injuries but Ham doesn’t do anything to help them win.
Yes those plus I think they burned one challenging the AD foul. His players rant and Rave and make circles with their fingers and the coach caves.
Doing that burned any opportunity to tie the game at the end. Players Run the game not the coach in this case.
This is twice I have seen you say this. Did you just start watching basketball this week? Have you honestly never seen a team not have a timeout at the end of the game? Happens fairly often.
I don’t think the good teams and the good coaches are down 2 with four seconds left and have zero timeouts. Maybe I’m wrong.
Star players run teams.
Lakers only need Caruso to defeat Nuggets. Caruso can shut down Murray
Whose fault?
Who gave away Caruso for nothing?
“Serious peril!” as opposed to unserious peril a la Wylie Coyote lol
Just report when he’s fired or not. We already know Lakers lost and losing is bad for coaches. Also they were never winning this series even if Spo was coaching them.
Someone has to be the scapegoat. RIP Ham
Revisionist history is very fascinating. Those of us who were actually paying attention in January know that Ham used those weird rotations because Reaves and Russell were bombing it up. The evidence suggests it worked, since the second half of the season was the best basketball Russell has played in his life.
You mean the same Austin Reaves who shot nearly 50% from the floor, 40% from deep, and averaged 17PPG in December?
The same Austin reaves who started the season averaging only 10 PPG in October, yes that one. Also the same Reaves who averaged 30 minutes per game in October and then finished December still averaging 30 minutes and then finished the entire season still averaging 30 minutes per game.
“Ham was benching reaves for no reason” is revisionist nonsense. Stats show he was actually underperforming and he was never actually benched. Ham just shuffled the rotations to try to find combinations where Reaves and Russell played better. You can argue it was dumb, but they did in fact play better.
Of course Darvin Ham is the scapegoat. LeBron is going to make sure he gets fired so he can have them bring in a coach that he wants. It’s too bad that he doesn’t realize that the coach is not the problem with LA.
26 PPG 7 RPG 8 APG at almost the age of 40 and you honestly want to say he is to blame? I’ll say this much for you clowns. You are not embarrassed to let people know just how ignorant and absolutely clueless you are when it comes to basketball. Do you think it’s Mike Trout’s fault the angels haven’t made the playoffs in years as well? Give me a break.
As Anthony Edwards said “I’ve never seen so many people be so happy to see an athlete fail more than Lebron. His whole career he’s been hated on constantly and slandered to no end to the point where when he retires nobody would have appreciated his greatness. I will be glad I will be one who did”.
If you can’t see that he hurts his team because of his ego at this point in his career then you are the one who isn’t being objective.
Counting stats don’t mean much if you can’t actually win.
Wouldn’t blaming LeBron’s ego instead of looking at his actual production be the ultimate in subjectivity?
Take away the traditional counting stats and LeBron is still playing at an elite level. He was 7th in the league in VORP, he was in the 99th percentile in EWA and EPM, 17th in Win Shares and 6th in PER. He probably shouldn’t be the main guy anymore but he’s still producing at a rate where he can be the second best player on a championship team.
Darvin Ham was in over his head this season but it wasn’t necessarily his fault. While it’s understandable because LeBron is nearly forty but the front office has been reluctant to give up future flexibility to build a better roster around LeBron and Davis in the here and now. They most likely won’t but if changes aren’t made I wouldn’t blame James or Davis took to play elsewhere.
it’s not not Mike Trout’s fault. but also baseball is much more determined by the quality of the team. NBA is typically who has the best player wins.
I love how you go straight to thinking I’m saying that LeBron is the problem, when I never said he was the problem. The actual problem with the roster is how it’s constructed around LeBron/AD. You can’t expect a very good constructed bench when theyre making $50+ mil EACH. Theyre taking up nearly 70% of the entire salary cap. They’re stuck with having to bottom feed reserve players for the veterans minimum. And now the rumors are going about adding potentially Trae Young in the offseason. So you’re adding another player worth $40+ mil to the team and will once again have to give scraps to find a bench.
it’s simple you can’t have 2 players take up 80% of the first apron tax and still field a competitive team that will go to finals.
But don’t forget he did win them the in-season tournament. That counts right?
Darvon Ham is not the reason this team was a #7 seed. He’s not a good coach, but this team is mediocre and mediocre teams have been playing good teams in the first round of the playoffs for a long time.