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

Thank. Christ.

 

After that article last night, it would be such a bad look on the team if he made it past today.

 

If you prefer to watch instead of read, here's Shams in video form



Also pertaining to Shams final comments in this: f*** Trae Young.

 

I don’t hate Trae but he’s really expensive. There are better targets especially if we are giving up picks.

 

He is, but that's life.

Once this dude is fired, there's a couple of interesting candidates. I said months ago the Lakers would have to eat about $10 million if Ham isn't hired by another team. Just get out out. He's awful. He needs to be in a small town market as an assistant.

Can't wait until he's out.

 

Now there’s a Devil’s advocaMEH done well!

 

BadLooks'R'Us

 

Oh even if he is picked up by some other team he gets that next 2 years of salary paid by Lakers.

 

Think that depends I don't think the Lakers would be responsible for all of it if he's hired by another team. that's my understanding.

either way, who's hiring him in the next 2 years? Chances are Lakers will pay him to sit and home or he might get an assistant gig.

 

Anyone else have an opinion on that? News to me ….. I know waived players works a little like that.

 

Let's add up all of Sham's screwups

Benching Dlo and Reeves
Not starting Rui until 50 games into the season
Never taking responsibility for anything
Having his players overhelp resulting in open 3s
Forcing useless Vincent into the lineup resulting in players not having rhythm
Failure to use timeouts
Failure to use challenges correctly
Short leash for some, long leash for others. Favoritism.
What was our offensive game plan?
Inability to adjust mid game
Players basically had to coach themselves.

 

Players lost faith in Darwin Ham in February.

The authors of The Athletic, Shams Charania, Jovan Buha and Sam Emik write about this.

Midway through the fourth quarter of a “road” game against the rival LA Clippers on Feb. 28, with the Los Angeles Lakers having cut a lead that was once as much as 21 points in the fourth quarter down to five, a question arose within the team’s player-led huddle.

Why are we running plays to have LeBron James attack a former Defensive Player of the Year in Kawhi Leonard if the Clippers are willingly switching big man Daniel Theis onto him in screening actions?

The answer, provided by multiple players whom team sources say spoke up in the huddle, would provide the key to that night’s comeback win in those final five-plus minutes.


Basketball players expressed doubts to each other about such tactics. They decided that they could more effectively use the shifts, which ultimately allowed for a major comeback. The Athletic suggests that this victory was perceived by some players as a sign of unity against the coach Ham.

Basketball players felt that they were able to take the initiative into their own hands amid the lack of effective leadership on the part of the coaching staff. They decided that victory was achieved thanks to their vision of the situation.


Source: The athletic

 

That's so f****** bad.

My goodness, bro. WTF????

 

Dave McMenamin, ESPN Staff Writer

ANOTHER DISAPPOINTING LOSS weighed on Los Angeles Lakers coach Darvin Ham as he maneuvered Saturday night I-110 traffic to catch a redeye flight back to his personal basketball bliss.

It was March 16, and Ham's Lakers had just been handled at home by the Golden State Warriors for their third loss in their past five games. It was L.A.'s second straight defeat to a team it was battling with for playoff seeding -- the Sacramento Kings had controlled the action three nights earlier.

Ham's trip wasn't just taking him 2,300 miles east, but 20 years back in time. The Detroit Pistons were celebrating the franchise's 2004 championship team two decades after they beat Ham's current employer in an NBA Finals run still heralded as one of the most shocking in league history. Ham played in 76 games that year for the Pistons, including 22 in the playoffs and all four of Detroit's Finals wins.

Following a few hours of sleep at the Godfrey Hotel in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood, Ham piled into a Sprinter van with a handful of his former teammates to head to Little Caesars Arena, where they were honored during a halftime ceremony.

"The pride of Saginaw, he brought the muscle, the power, both offensively and defensively," Pistons public address announcer John Mason bellowed into the microphone when it was Ham's turn to be introduced. "Say hello to dunkin' Daaaaaarvin Ham!"




A pyrotechnics display spit flames toward the arena roof as Ham took the court with Europe's "The Final Countdown" accompanying the intros, a throwback to the tune used when franchise icons such as Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton were announced in the starting lineup inside the old Palace of Auburn Hills.

But the timing of Ham's trip -- during the middle of a second straight challenging season with the Lakers -- made the song title applicable to what the 50-year-old coach was feeling back in L.A.

And all those former Pistons, whose shared proudest moment was upsetting the purple and gold, were now rallying around Ham.

"That's family," Ham told ESPN of his former Pistons teammates. "And so [the message was], like, 'Don't worry about it. Keep pushing through, man.' You know, 'You did it last year [to reach the conference finals].'

"'Your way works. Stick to your guns. Stick to your gut.' And 'Things are going to work themselves out.'"

But for a second straight season, the Denver Nuggets' way worked better, this time in the first round of the 2024 playoffs, putting Ham's job very much in jeopardy, league sources told ESPN. The Lakers plan to conduct a postmortem on the season in the coming days before making a decision on Ham's future, a team source told ESPN.

A surprise trip to the conference finals a year ago was followed by a chaotic season, headlined by the Lakers' triumph in the league's inaugural in-season tournament but hampered by injuries and inconsistency en route to the Western Conference's seventh seed.

Nuggets assert dominance over Lakers, win series 4-1Jamal Murray's late-game heroics power the Nuggets past the Lakers and into the second round.
As the Lakers enter the offseason, the franchise finds itself in flux beyond deciding who will be roaming the sidelines next season. The future of LeBron James, who has a player option worth $51.4 million for 2024-25, remains a mystery. Sources told ESPN that, as recently as last week, team officials still did not know the league's all-time leading scorer's plans of what he will do with his contract.

But James' continued ability to stave off Father Time and Anthony Davis coming off perhaps his most complete season as a Laker, team sources said, has left L.A. believing that the championship window for this core has not closed, and if a different voice is needed to lead the group, the franchise will make the financial commitment to do so.

THE LAKERS STUMBLED out of the gates this season with an opening-night loss -- to the champion Nuggets on their ring night -- leading to a 3-5 start. It was enough for Ham to switch around his starting lineup. He benched guard Austin Reaves on Nov. 10, replacing him with Cam Reddish in an attempt to shore up the Lakers' defense. A unit that had been such a staple during its 2023 postseason run was giving up 121.4 points per game in those early losses and ranked 19th in the league in defensive efficiency through Nov. 8.

The Lakers won 12 of their next 16 games, climbing to No. 4 in the Western Conference standings. The run culminated in Las Vegas, with the Lakers topping the Indiana Pacers in the NBA's inaugural in-season tournament.

All that winning came with a catch. The internal expectations to win the championship in June only heightened, while the fallout from shuffling his lineup -- first benching Reaves and later D'Angelo Russell while sticking with Taurean Prince even after Jarred Vanderbilt had returned from a left heel injury that cost him the first 20 games of the season -- hurt Ham's reputation both inside and outside the organization, sources told ESPN.


"It's been extremely challenging," Ham said. "Everyone that's been in and out of the lineup. Being criticized for not having a consistent rotation when I don't have consistent healthy bodies. The thing that frustrates me, and I love this job, I love the pressure that comes with it, I've always been calm in the midst of chaos ... [But] common sense tends to go out the window when you talk about my job in particular.

"It's amazing how people just skip that core part of having a consistency with your lineup is all predicated on health and performance. If you're coaching a team and one of your starters is like 10 games in a row, just s---ting the bed, what are you going to do?"
f***ing nincompoop caused Lakers win vs Denver

 

I am really curious who is that D-lo or Austin he's talking about

 

I thought that was Slick being serious for a moment. Almost responded...lol

 

You're not blameless here ya know? You disappeared like for 6-7 weeks at a crucial time when (knowing that Jeanie and the whole organization lurk on LB) .... more of your common sense urgency on why Ham needed to go ..... might have been enough to move them to make a change to Handy a couple months ago. Priorities Man!

 

i'd like to see and hear it for context. was he throwing a hypothetical or was he clearly referring to one of those two. yes, i know the hypothetical was maybe too on the nose, but you can tell in context if he meant to throw a guy under the bus.

anyway, where was that logic when pat beverley was playing minutes for us last year?

 

I don't know but likely doesn't matter. I don't think any team is going to pick up Ham after this collosal disaster. He was only good at fist bumping and high fives, getting players to run through the brick wall, now even that myth is shattered. What is worse, it is no sure bet our management is going to be willing to eat the ten million. We may have Ham back...lol. That hurt my fingers.

 

Time for Bron to do something right and lobby for Rondo to be on the bench in some goddamn capacity. IDC if it's a video coordinator... A HoF PG who was an excellent defender and facilitator and, reportedly, thinks the game?

Come on!!!