lol @ thinking this is the coach's fault. if anything, ham has been a positive in that the D has improved not his fault these "professional" athletes can't make 3 pointers
No coach in history would have this roster winning. None. You can’t win if you shoot 20-22% from three nightly.
I know the numbers show the D is improved, but it sure doesn't look that way, with open 3s and a parade to the bucket....
Denver shot the same % of threes and only one more made. Only big difference in team stats were fast break points (35-18) which is where we have to outscore opponents. We don't have shooting and rely on defense, so that should be our "go-to" offensive source. We also can't win if LeBron/AD don't carry us, they can't have 41pts combined considering our poor roster. When you combine that with only having one other guy (Lonnie with 15) in double digits, it's really hard to score more than your opponent. I think Ham brought some good habits and this team will need around 15/20 games to be more synced. Only thing I criticize is not using preseason to push for that, and that's on Ham to blame. Let's see how he handles Russ too
In 15 - 20 games we will be out of the playoffs. No doubt in my mind. We will be probably something silly like 6 - 14. You don't get back from that with an aging superstar, a fragile sidekick and an imbecile "3rd star".
yeah, i didn't like that we weren't serious about using the preseason more effectively. that was a harbinger again. i imagine the playoffs/play-in line is about 42 wins or so? 45 max. if you're 6-14, that means going 39-21 or maybe even 36-24. totally doable, imo--especially as the tanking teams actually start tanking. but yeah, the problem is you know lebron is missing 20 games and AD is missing at least 15. and they've missed zero of our four losses.
Ham has to bite the bullet and call a review of plays like Jokic's "And 1" where he basically elbowed AD in the head because he had nowhere else to go. Yeah theoretically you want to save these for the end of games but you have to highlight sometime ref's bad calls so they compensate the other way
we're harping on this another thread, too, but that play annoyed me. i kept waiting for an announcer to be like...AD beat him to the spot and put his hands up...and they just piled on the clown the lakers train. anyway, back to ham: his biggest job is going to be keeping lebron and AD from checking out again. that killed us early last year, and it could happen again, quickly and easily.
Well after this Russ will keep starting. We need shooting so bad I want to give Matt Ryan a try starting. AD, Lebron, Russ, Matt and either Lonnie or Austin.
Nepotism. The Lakers exist and do business in a bubble of “family”, they clearly sit around and tell eachother “meh, it’s fine, we’ll be fine, everyone out there are just haters, we have Lakers exceptionalism”.