Head Coach Discussion: Canned Ham, Who Is Our New Coach?

Edit.

 

I don't want to toot my own horn (if only because it is to the Lakers' detriment), but this was my reaction to his first or second presser as the Lakers coach:

It all has been downhill since then...

 

FIFY

 

Shams reporting

There's currently a growing disconnect between Darvin Ham and Lakers locker room stemming from disjointedness around rotation and adjustments, per me and @jovanbuha.

 

No surprise here, the rotation was grade school type coaching

 

Here's the highlights of the piece from Shams and Buha

That's a lot of f***ing sources on this thing.

Throwing s*** at the wall

Not great.

Continuity schmotinuity. Who needs it.



Like i said last night, players are saying one thing (accountability) and the coach is saying another (excuses).

Interesting we had a team meeting last night. Bron probably heard Ham's excuses and that's why he bolted without talking to the media

Seat's starting to warm up

 

Kurt is coming to save the day

 

We did get a sighting last night

 

I'm usually on the continuity and non-panic club but not sure if our future lies with Ham.

He did instill some things I enjoy: grit culture, defense first, accountability. We always fight back (we're also constantly trailing lol) and last year's playoff run was really good. Denver was just too good.
But he fails in a lot of departments. Our offense has always been awful. We have one of the best minds in basketball and yet we fail to have any kind of rhythm on offense, there's no movement, no plays. All shots look difficult. That paired with our unique ability to miss open 3s is a recipe for disaster.

I know LeBron coasts during regular season and it's no surprise we balled out in the IST because he really wanted to be the first to win it. But we did assemble a roster that should surface the waters of reg season. Miami just played without Jimmy and they beat us fair and square.

On another hand, we gambled on DLo and Rui, who either haven't been available or are significantly underperforming. That kills our hopes right there. They are among the top5 highest paid guys and their performance is needed.

There's a lot of factors explaining our underperformance. Ham is guilty on a number of them but not sure it gets solved just by replacing him. We have a short window with LeBron and I still think we have the personnel to win a chip, so our next couple months will decide our fate

I'm completely against a trade for Lavine or alike. Lack of talent is not the issue

 

When he gets fired (sadly not this season), he's never getting another HC gig. No way in hell. Dude sucks donkey balls, makes me hate the Lakers (maybe even more, than Beverley did).

 

The rotations are bad.

Ham has to decide whether he wants to be stubborn or just do what makes sense.

 

I don't think Ham has done a good job and his lineup decisions baffle me a lot: immediate small lineup when he has Gabe, trying Cam and Vando together, not trying last yea'rs starter, love of Prince but I think his deficiencies come out because this roster hasn't worked.

Unless you're a weird and ludicrously talented team like the Bulls who had Pippen/Jordan and Heat with Lebron/Wade you need a competent PG and Dlo checked out after the IST and Gabe got hurt. You saw last year how many times Schroeder saved the Lakers buts and taht security blanket is nowhere to be found.

The lakers players who can theoretically shoot like Prince and Dlo are awful on defense. And the Lakers players who are good on defense are bad on offense like Vando and Cam

Throw in some guys not playing as well as they should like Wood and Christie and and it's flawed roster which exposes Ham's weird coaching tics instead of hiding them

 

Ham have guys who each WON playoff games and got benched for newcomers who are either inconsistent or just terrible. Obviously that doesn’t inspire confidence

 

As for a new coach, I'm just not optimistic based on pretty much every coaching search we've done for the past decade or so.

Just looking at the current regime's moves, many of us felt like we should've just paid Lue. And before anyone jumps on me, I don't think he's the greatest coach of all time or anything crazy like that. Just seemed like a good fit for us given who we had and our criteria of wanting people who were a part of the Laker family.

We actually rebounded from that pretty well though and tripped over Vogel. I still think he got a raw deal and didn't think he deserved to be fired but the writing was on the wall at the end that he'd be the fall guy for the Westbrook debacle.

We then went with Ham who I did feel like showed some promise last year but has struggled to figure out what he wants to do with the current roster. I didn't like the candidate pool when we searched for him and feel similar now. Just not sold on any name out there. Also think giving a quick hook to two coaches who got you a ring and got you to the conference finals won't go over well.

Next move by the front office needs to be well thought out. I don't think we should move on unless we've clearly got a guy who is a clear improvement ready to go.

 

I don't know this forum seems to love Vando and I keep banging the drum that they literally couldn't play him last year in the playoffs because the opposing team constantly exposed him on offense. He's been again awful on offense and the team has been worse since he has returned! I don't blame this on him but this roster hasn't worked out.

I trust Max Christie outrebounds Prince and Rui and every Washington fan hated Rui's wish washiness when it came to intangibles like boxing out/hitting the glass

In other words when you have AD and Lebron and Reaves you can overcome a lot but not a mediocre coach and mediocre roster that keeps getting hurt.

 

Not to defend Ham, but didn't he move DLO to the bench because he was sucking and we were already on a losing streak?

Now that doesn't excuse for example playing Cam and Vando at the same time, relying on TP to defend the team's best perimeter player, playing Reaves 28 minutes, etc., but demoting DLO to the bench didn't seem to come out of nowhere.

 

The next coach they hire will be Doc Rivers IMO.

 

the run to the WCF is the part that is inexplicable to me given the rest of the body of evidence of his coaching

I just don't have faith that we'll catch lightning in a bottle twice.