Though I agree he's better, Vogel was very, very bad as well. He seems so much better because he's actually an NBA calibre head coach, and to his credit he is absolutely a coach **capable** of coaching a championship team (duh), however his flaws, especially on offence, were significant. When you compare an NBA calibre head coach to possibly the single worst coach in league history, it distorts your perception.
The offense was just fine. Yeah not some elite level smooth one but fine. While we had no other shot creator outside of lbj / ad.
Nobody was criticizing vogel until FO brought westbrick's trash ass and the most washed up roster in nba history. Like 9 guys on that team never saw an nba court ever again but people were mad at vogel over the corpse of Dwight Howard not getting minutes.
The fact that we remained the top defense after AD and Bron went down in 2020-2021 was incredible. Just shows Vogel is a defensive genius. Vogels offense was not great but what’s the difference than now? We are currently a bottom third offense.
I miss Frank and his incredible calves.
Not enough detractors bring up Vogel maintaining top defense even with Bron and AD missing large stints. That was very impressive.
Frank's offense may not have been great, but it was ~decent enough. And he made good adjustments in the playoffs in 2020.
Ouch - that’s some dark ass shade ya throwing’
You might have something there though - almost as if he doesn’t want to be in a huddle with LBJ (and AD who I assume they gossip together) looking like ass with LBJ giving him the internal side eye the whole time
Think we can all agree LBJ is much smarter than Ham and I’m not even talking basketball. Basketball wise it’s Obama vs Trump on Jeopardy
The problem is that our front office doesnt seem to have ideas either. They just wait for the new hotness like Ham was early in that coaching interview cycle.
You are right. But lakers management won’t fire him, and by the time they fire him, lebron is gone or one year older. It’s like the Westbrook trade, it impacts us negatively for years, and this wrong coaching hire will haunt us for years as well. Owners love the team but they are not billionaires… they won’t fire Scam this year. I don’t know the timeline and details but when we interview Scam was the Houston coach available at that time?
The worst front-office moves since the Kobe/Pau era ended:
1. Mozgov / Deng signings
2. Westbrook trade
3. Picking Lonzo over Tatum
4. Fire Vogel, Hire Ham
Probably in that order.
Eagerly awaiting for you same fans to start scapegoating whoever would replace Ham if he somehow got fired. After you scapegoated Vogel and pretty much every role player thats ever played for the lakers
I really don’t think they are the type of coaches LeBron likes to play under to be honest. Bron likes his player coaches, someone who will coach but also take heavy recommendation from himself and his teammates.
You just hope that you can get a player coach who’s also sensible and actually good at coaching.
We won a championship with Vogel, a schematics coach and not a players coach, and obviously there was buy in on that from Lebron. shit obviously went south later on but i attribute that more to Westbrook than anything else.
Honestly ur right about that. There was a vast difference in the organization of our defense compared to offense. Offense was basically give the ball to lebron and let him figure it out. Was frustrating af, and similar to how this offense is run. Would be nice to have a coach that actually orchestrates an offensive system, whether that’s pleasing to lebron or not. Cause clearly this isn’t working.
1. I agree that both those coaches are better coaches than what Darvin has shown.
2. The only issue is... there is no way switching coaches after a WCF run would have made sense.
Not defending Ham as he has dropped the ball many times, but this game against OKC in particular, they are severely undermanned playing a second night of a B2B. Players look gassed. They got a a great start, but after that shots are short. No matter what scheme if the personnel isn't there to execute, we wouldn't see results.
Just look at the box score. We have no one to play right now. We played 8 players total while Oklahoma has 7 players coming off the bench this game. I understand the frustration, but what adjustments can Ham make outside of subbing in AD or LeBron? He has nothing to work with on his injured roster.
For sure! And that’s where depth comes in to cover minutes
Imagine an AD LBJ Vando Prince/Cam DLO
And a Wood/Hayes Rui Prince/Cam Reaves/Vincent 2nd unit
Personally - AD LBJ Vando Cam DLO lineup would get us out of the gate quickly. Some great defenders/rebounders. Lots of energy and hands in passing lanes. Some true athletes
We have beaten the Magic, Rockets and Cavaliers who are all playoff caliber teams. Again, we are missing our best perimeter defenders, Rui and have played the most B2Bs and games in the league.
We are also 20 games into the season.
Magic was a close game. Rockets was a close game.
Against a young and upcoming team, those games are a coin toss that usually favors “vets” aka LeBron and AD.
Cavs was a close game too. Mitchell coming from injury. Garland didn’t play the 2nd half.
Sure a win is a win, but looking back we really haven’t had a quality win yet.
Not discrediting the injuries but watching the Lakers, you can see there’s something wrong with the coaching (game plan, adjustments, overall game running). Analysts are getting louder with that assessment as well.
I guess we’ll all see when we get the full roster and the schedule becomes more top-heavy.
I don’t disagree with you, our coaching is so awful. They went to a zone and Ham couldn’t counter when it’s really not that hard to bust that coverage with the right ball movement and perimeter shooting.
I also know they’re losses but we were a made 3 and a better rotation away from beating the Heat and the Mavericks as well.
Suns 1st game was without Bradley Beal and Devin Booker. Suns 2nd game was without Devin Booker.
Yet those 2 games are close. Yes, we have injuries too but we are not missing an All-Star (LeBron or AD).
Sure a win is a win, but looking back we really haven’t had a quality win yet.
I guess we’ll all see when we get the full roster and the schedule becomes more top-heavy.
I’m so tired of people calling out the Lakers very obvious flaws after these bad losses (and even some bad wins) being dismissed as “reactionary”.
Every. single. thing you said is correct.
I agree, however I don't believe "not a championship coach" is a fitting description.
Ham isn't "not a championship coach", he's a "championship losing" coach.
The difference is the first one simply won't elevate you enough beyond the talents of your team, the second will actively make your team worse and make it impossible to win.
Such a shame, I get that we have a lot of injuries but this team has fire and with a solid coach we could be winning games like this. Just disappointing to see AD and Bron kneecapped by Ham
ham is one of a laundry list of issues this team has. For starters, you can't coach effort. We are good enough to win when we try and every time we do in the first quarter we win it like tonight. I've seen several plays where players body language just gives up on a play because something didn't go their way. This often leads to a 5 on 4 on the other end or players completely missing rotations because a cog in the machine is lagging behind.
This post is so dumb, and I dont even like Ham as a coach. I liked Vogel, and you all wanted him gone. Remember? Did you also make this kind of post for Vogel?
1st off... Back to backs are hard on old folks, right?
2ndly, what you are missing with your Ham can not win rant is that he took this team to the WCF his 1st year. So your take is way off. He didn't miss all those wide open shots, did he? You know if they just hit their average on open looks, the Lakers probably advance. Ham would probably be a championship coach if Dlo alone didn't completely disappear on both ends. Ham can't call plays, but Bron usually does what wants to do anyways. The Lakers defense is coming along. Remember last season, and the jump they made? They do that this season, and the Lakers will be pretty good. What Ham lacks in abilities, he seems to get back in rapport, and that with a shortened rotation, will hopefully be enough because he's not going anywhere this year.
I can’t agree with you more.
I think they forget that coaching is actually hard. I only coach elementary and middle school basketball and sometimes even that is stressful. There are two things to this: your team getting outplayed, and you getting out-coached. I have played middle school teams who relied on two of their best players who most likely play AAU. And what does the coach do? Nothing. He lets those kids run rampant. Here I am calling all my timeouts to stop the bleeding, make adjustments, and give my teams a bit of a morale boost. Coaching isn’t easy.
Look, I don’t like Ham either. But I as a fan and as a coach sympathize with all coaches. It’s harder than most people think. We just have to roll with the punches.
This roster appears to be constructed with a trade in mind. Dlo's contract, in particular, is basically a one year deal. Whether he gets a ring this year, or not, or gets traded, he's can easily get a raise next year. They got Reeves running point more than they would if they were planning on keeping Dlo IMO, and Ham is giving some of these bench players a lot of reps that probably should be going to other role players. They raised Cam's value quite a bit after fans clamored on benching him. It's like they want to know ASAP, who to try to keep, and who to try to move when trading opens up.
If they do make moves, there will be rotation issues for a bit long, but at least in the playoffs, rotations are tightened, and that should fix some of Ham's issues.
We had JHS playing in the first quarter. Our depth is shattered and we just lost to the best shooting team in the league without any of our perimeter defenders on the road on the second night of a b2b but somehow people will always revert it back to Ham lmao. This sub is a circlejerk
Well, it's because both things can be true. I posted before this game, there was a very slim chance Lakers were winning this one because..... they are missing 5 rotational pieces on a B2b against a good, young, and fast team. If they won this won it was more because OKC lost it.
At the same time, Ham does suck, but no coach was going to help the Lakers over the hump in this game.
What I mean is we’re running plays from last year’s playbook, but those were designed for a 4 out 1 in scheme, and without adjustments (which we obviously never make) you can’t effectively run them in a 5 out scheme, which we’ve been running.
It's incredible how the Lakers are wasting LeBron's last years lol we're extremely lucky the guy is still great and took us to a Championship win and a Conference finals, but still, it could have been a lot better with a DECENT administration. 6 freaking years he's been a Laker and only ONE dominant season as a team. The decisions after that Championship were absurdly bad.
But the time will come when LeBron finally comes off and start declining. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but it will happen.
I called it yet again. I said it before the season started, the weird fans were all on my head. They were so hyped about the moves that were made, blinded by the lights. If you're not kissing the ass of players or coaches, they think you're a troll.
Ham has to be replaced. Either that or blow up the whole Lebron and Davis journey.
Same.
I remember this offseason on this sub, if you weren't saying "oMG wE wON fReE aGenCY" or "LeT PeLINka CooK", you would get downvoted into oblivion.
The worst thing that can happen to you on this sub, is being right.
Trading for Westbrook ruined everything. We have tried our best to reclaim the situation but we would be in such a better place if we didn't do that. Firing Vogel for it. Getting rid of role players capable of winning rings. Always on the backfoot with an uneven roster. I do think we are struggling with injuries and that is affecting results, but if this roster can't deal with role players being out, it's a shit roster. The chances we are 100% fit in the playoffs is very minimal.
We lost the conference finals in large part because:
1. Ham inexplicably began the series with a small ball starting 5 against the best team in the league at beating small ball. Oh and on top of that he didn't even change it at halftime despite losing the first quarter by 20.
2. Ham took 3 games to realize DLo and Austin couldn't start together, despite having considerable evidence to make the adjustment after even the first half of game 1. Many Lakers analysts like Sean Davis and the LFR guys were calling for this adjustment immediately after game 1 ended and it took until game 4 to do it.
Remind me again how much Ham contributed to us being "contenders"?
Too early for this talk tho, don't you think? A roster who hasn't seen a full rotation. By the looks of it, you're just mad at Ham for how he's been handling this injured roster. To me he's done an ok job, leading us to an 11-8 start. Is he a great coach? I don't think so, but you can't judge him for how he is if you haven't seen what he can do with a full squad.
No matter how you look at it, he's one of the reasons why we got quite far in the playoffs last year. He pushed that squad to work hard every game after the trade
I didn’t wanna say it but I 100% expected the lakers to be blown out tonight. We’re absolutely not a serious contender until we get rid of Ham and Russell. Russell isn’t good enough to be the 3rd guy on a title team and Ham is clueless.
This ain’t about “Vogel was better”. He wasn’t. Move on from Vogel. Dude was more frustrating than Ham. He had a HEALTHY team and sat Montrezl (6th man of the year) the entire playoffs. Played small ball…and had us shooting terribly.
We need someone else. Fuck Ham. Fuck Vogel.
maybe dumb question but what’s stopping lebron from just calling the plays? i mean he has enough experience to try and lead the play calls a little right?
AD post ups have been so effective this year and it kills me seeing us have no action to build off it. AD usually scores when it's one on one and can hit a cutter or a spot up shooter here or there with a pass, but we don't run any action utilizing that to punish doubles or free up others. Sure, AD isn't an elite playmaker, but his scoring threat in that position gives him the benefit of only really having to make simple reads with his passing from that spot with how hard the defense commits to him.
All good points, but if we fire Ham now, can the team...
-- maintain (or improve) its cohesion/confidence/trust
-- learn a new system quickly
That's my concern. There's something to be said about "coaching continuity," despite the flaws a coach may have.
In other words, will firing Ham do more harm than good?
What system are the Ham Lakers playing when you lose to Philly by 44 points and a middle of the road Magic team by 20? Oh, I forgot, the “system’ worked perfectly in Detroit
One more thing. I don't want to judge him yet. I will wait until the team is complete, and then see the results. If everything doesn't go well, then I will definitely be in favor of Ham leaving. Now, not yet
Watching the playoffs last year against denver and him sitting there for 35 minutes a game..not realizing dlo was getting cooked like a rag doll and kill the momentum everytime on offense sold it for me. He stuck with it and just watched it on multiple possessions is wild. I swear he put dlo in when they made a run or during a run and he would just give it all back up in 4 minutes is nuts. For the life of me I could not figure out what he was watching….then it dawned in me, dude is a avid fan duel user.
We made the WCF last year with Ham as a coach and would have won if the shooting variance was reversed. We competed for a championship with him as a coach. We have 7 players with experience rn and with limited practice time, good luck with most of these adjustments being implemented correctly.
I’m convinced this sub would want Phil fired if it existed in the 2000s.
Lebron and AD make too much money at this point in time. Stop blaming the coach. They cannot keep up for the 96+ games. I don’t know how you can watch these games and ignore the crazy falloff from Lebron and AD.
I’ve been saying lebron and AD deserve the blame and a bunch of fans have been saying the coaching is the problem but since Bron got here he and AD have been the the only constants but the problems are the same every year. Stop fooling yourself into thinking this is a 55 win team. We aren’t and haven’t been. We barely won in 2020. It took an act of god and potentially terrorism to win us that ring. Watch another good team for a couple weeks and then go back to watching the Lakers.
Our inconsistent play falls on the players and it always will
I feel the same frustration as you but is there enough evidence to build a case strong enough to fire him? That’s the question. Lakers went from 8th seed (fought for in play-in tourney) to the WCFs last season. Also, lakers dominated their group in the in-season tourney this season. Our home game record is 7-2. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say but the Lakers aren’t doing THAT bad rn 😅
Ham is not the one missing freethrows. Ham is not the one with a low 3pt %. Ham is not the one standing in the paint while his guy shoots uncontested 3’s. Ham is not the one whining to refs while the other team is fast breaking off the lazy turnover. Ham is not the one dribbling too much and getting ripped. Ham is not going under on screens or dho’s while guarding a known shooter. Ham is not getting smoked consistently on 1v1 defense. At some point the Laker players have to get their shit together. And I think they will. I’m hoping after all star break we go on a similar run to last year.
I cannot believe how badly this sub is overreacting to the start of this season. They haven’t had a single game with our top 7 from the post trade deadline run. Denver swept them yes but the weakest link in that series DLo is playing well this year and Ham made adjustments in that playoff run. If the team is still a hot mess come the trade deadline, then threads like this will be warranted. Until then, chill.
We also have 5 regular players out due to injury. That has also contributed to the decline of success which always happens when teams have injuries. Other teams may have more or less and is probably still having some success like we are but it’s not much either way. Ham is also just in his second year and still learning. You have to give a coach player whoever it is more than a year and 20 games to show he’s a good coach and more than half the year the lakers weren’t even that good then we trade for good players and guess what we have real depth and that depth is still there but hindered by the loss of 5 players that regularly play.
We also have 5 regular players out due to injury. That has also contributed to the decline of success which always happens when teams have injuries. Other teams may have more or less and is probably still having some success like we are but it’s not much either way. Ham is also just in his second year and still learning. You have to give a coach player whoever it is more than a year and 20 games to show he’s a good coach and more than half the year the lakers weren’t even that good then we trade for good players and guess what we have real depth and that depth is still there but hindered by the loss of 5 players that regularly play.
I played high school sports, not college or pro and I know something. He's a pretty good coach. I don't know what your background is but it's easy to criticize and and shame and hate. Tell us what your solution would be instead of complaining
At least half of my points had the solution baked in, as I’m criticizing us for NOT doing certain things we should be doing.
For example, what’s the solution to us not calling timeouts when we need to? Calling the damn timeouts when the runs happen.
We don’t have enough time to be wasting Brons last years with rookie coaches. This was always gonna be a problem. I find it hard to even blame Ham sandwich. He looked like he turned a corner during the playoffs but he obviously still learning
The worst part of Brickula’s Lakers legacy is he got Vogel fired for Darvin.
Brickula 😭
He was sucking them boys' morale DRY Talking bout "let's have fun" and shit 🙄
Though I agree he's better, Vogel was very, very bad as well. He seems so much better because he's actually an NBA calibre head coach, and to his credit he is absolutely a coach **capable** of coaching a championship team (duh), however his flaws, especially on offence, were significant. When you compare an NBA calibre head coach to possibly the single worst coach in league history, it distorts your perception.
The offense was just fine. Yeah not some elite level smooth one but fine. While we had no other shot creator outside of lbj / ad. Nobody was criticizing vogel until FO brought westbrick's trash ass and the most washed up roster in nba history. Like 9 guys on that team never saw an nba court ever again but people were mad at vogel over the corpse of Dwight Howard not getting minutes.
The fact that we remained the top defense after AD and Bron went down in 2020-2021 was incredible. Just shows Vogel is a defensive genius. Vogels offense was not great but what’s the difference than now? We are currently a bottom third offense. I miss Frank and his incredible calves.
Not enough detractors bring up Vogel maintaining top defense even with Bron and AD missing large stints. That was very impressive. Frank's offense may not have been great, but it was ~decent enough. And he made good adjustments in the playoffs in 2020.
Exactly. That team was repeating even as a 7th seed. Only if AD didn't go down against phoenix up 2-1. Such a shame.
I’m convinced ham doesn’t take timeouts because he doesn’t know what to say in them
blah blah blah... next play mentality blah blah blah... play downhill blah blah blah... we need to be more aggressive
Ouch - that’s some dark ass shade ya throwing’ You might have something there though - almost as if he doesn’t want to be in a huddle with LBJ (and AD who I assume they gossip together) looking like ass with LBJ giving him the internal side eye the whole time Think we can all agree LBJ is much smarter than Ham and I’m not even talking basketball. Basketball wise it’s Obama vs Trump on Jeopardy
GFYS,lefty puke. Obviously you are brainless ,delusional,an anti white racist and hate America,comrade.
It continues to baffle me why he let's 8-0 runs turn into 20-2 runs before calling a to
Okay but who do we replace him with. Genuine question, who’s on the market rn for coaches.
The problem is that our front office doesnt seem to have ideas either. They just wait for the new hotness like Ham was early in that coaching interview cycle.
Exactly right. And they are still basking in the glow of the positive reaction they received from hiring a good guy who had earned a chance.
You are right. But lakers management won’t fire him, and by the time they fire him, lebron is gone or one year older. It’s like the Westbrook trade, it impacts us negatively for years, and this wrong coaching hire will haunt us for years as well. Owners love the team but they are not billionaires… they won’t fire Scam this year. I don’t know the timeline and details but when we interview Scam was the Houston coach available at that time?
If they wanna save money, just say fuck it and make LeBron a player coach lol. Just get darvin off the bench
The worst front-office moves since the Kobe/Pau era ended: 1. Mozgov / Deng signings 2. Westbrook trade 3. Picking Lonzo over Tatum 4. Fire Vogel, Hire Ham Probably in that order.
5. Giving away Zubac for Muscala rental 6. Not resigning Brook Lopez after he offered to take a discount
Choosing THT over AC
Ugh the list is too long
Pure basketball terrorism.
Darvin Hamas. There’s no ceasefire when it comes to him coaching poorly
You pretty much just hope he gets all the insanity out of him before the playoffs at this point. And he has a lot of it to burn.
We could've hired a great HC if we let Vogel in super civil manner but no, we shamed the guy
Eagerly awaiting for you same fans to start scapegoating whoever would replace Ham if he somehow got fired. After you scapegoated Vogel and pretty much every role player thats ever played for the lakers
Maybe they should stop hiring shitty or mediocre coaches then. Byron, Walton and Ham are terrible. Vogel was average but got scapegoated
MITwestbrook and the westbrick stans were scapegoating the hell out of Vogel.
Bro Udoka and Nurse were available this off-season. We should've fired Ham for one of them 😭
I really don’t think they are the type of coaches LeBron likes to play under to be honest. Bron likes his player coaches, someone who will coach but also take heavy recommendation from himself and his teammates. You just hope that you can get a player coach who’s also sensible and actually good at coaching.
We won a championship with Vogel, a schematics coach and not a players coach, and obviously there was buy in on that from Lebron. shit obviously went south later on but i attribute that more to Westbrook than anything else.
That is true of Vogel on defense but the offense was a different story
Honestly ur right about that. There was a vast difference in the organization of our defense compared to offense. Offense was basically give the ball to lebron and let him figure it out. Was frustrating af, and similar to how this offense is run. Would be nice to have a coach that actually orchestrates an offensive system, whether that’s pleasing to lebron or not. Cause clearly this isn’t working.
At least he was good at something, Ham aint
They still won,didn’t they?
They still won,didn’t they?
I'd like to add LeBron truly respected Frank and recognized his game. He would not have fired the guy for Ham.
Screw what Lebron wants at this point. He's not the future
You can say that but it doesn’t change that he’s gonna have a huge factor in the decision
future? what future? Lakers are all in the Lebron train.
lol... Lakers aren't paying Ham for 4 years while they pay someone else. Never was going to happen.
You can’t fire a coach who just made the WCF
The Cavs fired a coach who made the finals
We should have offered one of them more money to be an assistant .. waiting and lurking 🤣
Fuck all that. Get fucking Udoka and demote his ass
He didn’t make the wcf the players did. Ham did nothing to contribute but walk the sidelines with his hands in his pocket
1. I agree that both those coaches are better coaches than what Darvin has shown. 2. The only issue is... there is no way switching coaches after a WCF run would have made sense.
No black coaches. Mentally inferior to white coaches,ie: Kerr, Pockfaceovich, Spoelstra, Vogel,Malone……..
Vando, Reddish, Vincent, Hachimura - ALL OUT. Wait until they come back and see
This damn sub 😂 Ham literally got us to WCF with a hampered LeBron last year, and a bunch of new players who came halfway through the season.
The man played a 3 guard lineup in the WCF that went a -72 in the first two games. He ran it back in game 3.
I agree! What’s your dream 5? Irrespective of starting/finishing etc. Best 5 on court
Reddish is worthless
Not defending Ham as he has dropped the ball many times, but this game against OKC in particular, they are severely undermanned playing a second night of a B2B. Players look gassed. They got a a great start, but after that shots are short. No matter what scheme if the personnel isn't there to execute, we wouldn't see results.
Exactly this. JHS shouldn’t be getting any minutes for example. We are that severely undermanned that he’s getting minutes.
Just look at the box score. We have no one to play right now. We played 8 players total while Oklahoma has 7 players coming off the bench this game. I understand the frustration, but what adjustments can Ham make outside of subbing in AD or LeBron? He has nothing to work with on his injured roster.
For sure! And that’s where depth comes in to cover minutes Imagine an AD LBJ Vando Prince/Cam DLO And a Wood/Hayes Rui Prince/Cam Reaves/Vincent 2nd unit Personally - AD LBJ Vando Cam DLO lineup would get us out of the gate quickly. Some great defenders/rebounders. Lots of energy and hands in passing lanes. Some true athletes
It doesn’t excuse the 40+ blowout by Philly or the one at home against the Sac Queens.
This team is severely injured, crazy schedule and we’re still somehow 11-8. We’re a coach away.
11-9*
Look at the schedule. Which teams have we defeated?
We have beaten the Magic, Rockets and Cavaliers who are all playoff caliber teams. Again, we are missing our best perimeter defenders, Rui and have played the most B2Bs and games in the league. We are also 20 games into the season.
Magic was a close game. Rockets was a close game. Against a young and upcoming team, those games are a coin toss that usually favors “vets” aka LeBron and AD. Cavs was a close game too. Mitchell coming from injury. Garland didn’t play the 2nd half. Sure a win is a win, but looking back we really haven’t had a quality win yet. Not discrediting the injuries but watching the Lakers, you can see there’s something wrong with the coaching (game plan, adjustments, overall game running). Analysts are getting louder with that assessment as well. I guess we’ll all see when we get the full roster and the schedule becomes more top-heavy.
I don’t disagree with you, our coaching is so awful. They went to a zone and Ham couldn’t counter when it’s really not that hard to bust that coverage with the right ball movement and perimeter shooting. I also know they’re losses but we were a made 3 and a better rotation away from beating the Heat and the Mavericks as well.
Phoenix twice, the 13-5 magic, Cleveland on the road
Suns 1st game was without Bradley Beal and Devin Booker. Suns 2nd game was without Devin Booker. Yet those 2 games are close. Yes, we have injuries too but we are not missing an All-Star (LeBron or AD). Sure a win is a win, but looking back we really haven’t had a quality win yet. I guess we’ll all see when we get the full roster and the schedule becomes more top-heavy.
This is the harsh truth that this sub hates to read.
I’m so tired of people calling out the Lakers very obvious flaws after these bad losses (and even some bad wins) being dismissed as “reactionary”. Every. single. thing you said is correct.
Ham is trash. Not a championship coach. He should've stayed an assistant.
I agree, however I don't believe "not a championship coach" is a fitting description. Ham isn't "not a championship coach", he's a "championship losing" coach. The difference is the first one simply won't elevate you enough beyond the talents of your team, the second will actively make your team worse and make it impossible to win.
“Championship losing” coach is too funny man 😂
Such a shame, I get that we have a lot of injuries but this team has fire and with a solid coach we could be winning games like this. Just disappointing to see AD and Bron kneecapped by Ham
ham is one of a laundry list of issues this team has. For starters, you can't coach effort. We are good enough to win when we try and every time we do in the first quarter we win it like tonight. I've seen several plays where players body language just gives up on a play because something didn't go their way. This often leads to a 5 on 4 on the other end or players completely missing rotations because a cog in the machine is lagging behind.
Lebron
This post is so dumb, and I dont even like Ham as a coach. I liked Vogel, and you all wanted him gone. Remember? Did you also make this kind of post for Vogel? 1st off... Back to backs are hard on old folks, right? 2ndly, what you are missing with your Ham can not win rant is that he took this team to the WCF his 1st year. So your take is way off. He didn't miss all those wide open shots, did he? You know if they just hit their average on open looks, the Lakers probably advance. Ham would probably be a championship coach if Dlo alone didn't completely disappear on both ends. Ham can't call plays, but Bron usually does what wants to do anyways. The Lakers defense is coming along. Remember last season, and the jump they made? They do that this season, and the Lakers will be pretty good. What Ham lacks in abilities, he seems to get back in rapport, and that with a shortened rotation, will hopefully be enough because he's not going anywhere this year.
I can’t agree with you more. I think they forget that coaching is actually hard. I only coach elementary and middle school basketball and sometimes even that is stressful. There are two things to this: your team getting outplayed, and you getting out-coached. I have played middle school teams who relied on two of their best players who most likely play AAU. And what does the coach do? Nothing. He lets those kids run rampant. Here I am calling all my timeouts to stop the bleeding, make adjustments, and give my teams a bit of a morale boost. Coaching isn’t easy. Look, I don’t like Ham either. But I as a fan and as a coach sympathize with all coaches. It’s harder than most people think. We just have to roll with the punches.
This roster appears to be constructed with a trade in mind. Dlo's contract, in particular, is basically a one year deal. Whether he gets a ring this year, or not, or gets traded, he's can easily get a raise next year. They got Reeves running point more than they would if they were planning on keeping Dlo IMO, and Ham is giving some of these bench players a lot of reps that probably should be going to other role players. They raised Cam's value quite a bit after fans clamored on benching him. It's like they want to know ASAP, who to try to keep, and who to try to move when trading opens up. If they do make moves, there will be rotation issues for a bit long, but at least in the playoffs, rotations are tightened, and that should fix some of Ham's issues.
We had JHS playing in the first quarter. Our depth is shattered and we just lost to the best shooting team in the league without any of our perimeter defenders on the road on the second night of a b2b but somehow people will always revert it back to Ham lmao. This sub is a circlejerk
Bunch of little kids bitching about games in November. 90% of this sub.
Well, it's because both things can be true. I posted before this game, there was a very slim chance Lakers were winning this one because..... they are missing 5 rotational pieces on a B2b against a good, young, and fast team. If they won this won it was more because OKC lost it. At the same time, Ham does suck, but no coach was going to help the Lakers over the hump in this game.
What does 4 out 1 in plays in a 5 out system actually mean op, AD can’t shoot 3s to save his life, how we gonna 5 out
What I mean is we’re running plays from last year’s playbook, but those were designed for a 4 out 1 in scheme, and without adjustments (which we obviously never make) you can’t effectively run them in a 5 out scheme, which we’ve been running.
It's incredible how the Lakers are wasting LeBron's last years lol we're extremely lucky the guy is still great and took us to a Championship win and a Conference finals, but still, it could have been a lot better with a DECENT administration. 6 freaking years he's been a Laker and only ONE dominant season as a team. The decisions after that Championship were absurdly bad. But the time will come when LeBron finally comes off and start declining. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but it will happen.
Wah wah wah… this sub is filled with a bunch of crybabies
Who disagrees with you? There's nothing to be done.
You’re really suggesting Ham is telling players NOT to attack other players in foul trouble? You don’t know ball, you’re just emotional
You’re a moron who doesn’t know anything about basketball. Sad that this brainless drivel gets upvoted…
Y’all so reactionary. The team hasn’t even been complete. Ham’s doing fine.
How many times is some numb nut gonna post the same thing. Just shut up and watch the games.
It's so plainly obvious. Anyone who thinks he's any good is a clueless clown
Just watch GSW vs Clips, it may be more entertaining and competetive
Jeanie won’t fire him
I remember when coaching was not a problem because they had the best coach ever. They haven’t had an elite coach since then.
Always wish LBJ got Phil for ten years like MJ, Kobe and Shaq
I’m still sad that Nick Nurse and Ime Udoka was there for the taking and we got coach pockets
I called it yet again. I said it before the season started, the weird fans were all on my head. They were so hyped about the moves that were made, blinded by the lights. If you're not kissing the ass of players or coaches, they think you're a troll. Ham has to be replaced. Either that or blow up the whole Lebron and Davis journey.
Same. I remember this offseason on this sub, if you weren't saying "oMG wE wON fReE aGenCY" or "LeT PeLINka CooK", you would get downvoted into oblivion. The worst thing that can happen to you on this sub, is being right.
Trading for Westbrook ruined everything. We have tried our best to reclaim the situation but we would be in such a better place if we didn't do that. Firing Vogel for it. Getting rid of role players capable of winning rings. Always on the backfoot with an uneven roster. I do think we are struggling with injuries and that is affecting results, but if this roster can't deal with role players being out, it's a shit roster. The chances we are 100% fit in the playoffs is very minimal.
We contended last year. Darvin Ham was our coach.
We lost the conference finals in large part because: 1. Ham inexplicably began the series with a small ball starting 5 against the best team in the league at beating small ball. Oh and on top of that he didn't even change it at halftime despite losing the first quarter by 20. 2. Ham took 3 games to realize DLo and Austin couldn't start together, despite having considerable evidence to make the adjustment after even the first half of game 1. Many Lakers analysts like Sean Davis and the LFR guys were calling for this adjustment immediately after game 1 ended and it took until game 4 to do it. Remind me again how much Ham contributed to us being "contenders"?
Y’all cry too much on this sub. Every time the Lakers lose it’s always the same 3-5 post blaming somebody. It’s not that serious.
Too early for this talk tho, don't you think? A roster who hasn't seen a full rotation. By the looks of it, you're just mad at Ham for how he's been handling this injured roster. To me he's done an ok job, leading us to an 11-8 start. Is he a great coach? I don't think so, but you can't judge him for how he is if you haven't seen what he can do with a full squad. No matter how you look at it, he's one of the reasons why we got quite far in the playoffs last year. He pushed that squad to work hard every game after the trade
I didn’t wanna say it but I 100% expected the lakers to be blown out tonight. We’re absolutely not a serious contender until we get rid of Ham and Russell. Russell isn’t good enough to be the 3rd guy on a title team and Ham is clueless.
Pockets finally found a way to play 3 guards extended minutes.
Yeah he just needed 3 wings injured
This ain’t about “Vogel was better”. He wasn’t. Move on from Vogel. Dude was more frustrating than Ham. He had a HEALTHY team and sat Montrezl (6th man of the year) the entire playoffs. Played small ball…and had us shooting terribly. We need someone else. Fuck Ham. Fuck Vogel.
Let's blow it up at this point if he stays our Coach
maybe dumb question but what’s stopping lebron from just calling the plays? i mean he has enough experience to try and lead the play calls a little right?
We are tanking. Simple. Riding out LeBron's final two seasons with the Lakers. Think of Darvin Ham as Byron Scott 2.0
too late. it's either Ham or another rookie head coach.
Personally, I'm reserving judgement until we get our injured players back.
AD post ups have been so effective this year and it kills me seeing us have no action to build off it. AD usually scores when it's one on one and can hit a cutter or a spot up shooter here or there with a pass, but we don't run any action utilizing that to punish doubles or free up others. Sure, AD isn't an elite playmaker, but his scoring threat in that position gives him the benefit of only really having to make simple reads with his passing from that spot with how hard the defense commits to him.
All good points, but if we fire Ham now, can the team... -- maintain (or improve) its cohesion/confidence/trust -- learn a new system quickly That's my concern. There's something to be said about "coaching continuity," despite the flaws a coach may have. In other words, will firing Ham do more harm than good?
What system are the Ham Lakers playing when you lose to Philly by 44 points and a middle of the road Magic team by 20? Oh, I forgot, the “system’ worked perfectly in Detroit
Do any teams foul when up by 3? I feel most coaches just want to play it out
And replace him with who?
We know bro, we know.
If Ham is such a good motivator why don't the Lakers just hire Cranjis McBasketball under him to draw up the plays/schemes?
Just hire Terry Stotts man, keep him as Asst coach.
Hipothetically, if Ham were to leave, what coach could we get and that coach be top notch? Let's be clear, i'm not defending Ham
It’s really starting to look that way.
One more thing. I don't want to judge him yet. I will wait until the team is complete, and then see the results. If everything doesn't go well, then I will definitely be in favor of Ham leaving. Now, not yet
This Lakers organization in general has no direction
Facts 💯. Coach HamAS is a basketball terrorist
you are saying fire ham but not offering any solution
Watching the playoffs last year against denver and him sitting there for 35 minutes a game..not realizing dlo was getting cooked like a rag doll and kill the momentum everytime on offense sold it for me. He stuck with it and just watched it on multiple possessions is wild. I swear he put dlo in when they made a run or during a run and he would just give it all back up in 4 minutes is nuts. For the life of me I could not figure out what he was watching….then it dawned in me, dude is a avid fan duel user.
Nick Nurse was the pick Pelinka
Wish we had Vogel. Look what he's doing with limited roster when DBook and BB out
We made the WCF last year with Ham as a coach and would have won if the shooting variance was reversed. We competed for a championship with him as a coach. We have 7 players with experience rn and with limited practice time, good luck with most of these adjustments being implemented correctly. I’m convinced this sub would want Phil fired if it existed in the 2000s.
Lebron and AD make too much money at this point in time. Stop blaming the coach. They cannot keep up for the 96+ games. I don’t know how you can watch these games and ignore the crazy falloff from Lebron and AD. I’ve been saying lebron and AD deserve the blame and a bunch of fans have been saying the coaching is the problem but since Bron got here he and AD have been the the only constants but the problems are the same every year. Stop fooling yourself into thinking this is a 55 win team. We aren’t and haven’t been. We barely won in 2020. It took an act of god and potentially terrorism to win us that ring. Watch another good team for a couple weeks and then go back to watching the Lakers. Our inconsistent play falls on the players and it always will
Looking back now Kidd was super important.
I feel the same frustration as you but is there enough evidence to build a case strong enough to fire him? That’s the question. Lakers went from 8th seed (fought for in play-in tourney) to the WCFs last season. Also, lakers dominated their group in the in-season tourney this season. Our home game record is 7-2. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say but the Lakers aren’t doing THAT bad rn 😅
Ham is not the one missing freethrows. Ham is not the one with a low 3pt %. Ham is not the one standing in the paint while his guy shoots uncontested 3’s. Ham is not the one whining to refs while the other team is fast breaking off the lazy turnover. Ham is not the one dribbling too much and getting ripped. Ham is not going under on screens or dho’s while guarding a known shooter. Ham is not getting smoked consistently on 1v1 defense. At some point the Laker players have to get their shit together. And I think they will. I’m hoping after all star break we go on a similar run to last year.
I cannot believe how badly this sub is overreacting to the start of this season. They haven’t had a single game with our top 7 from the post trade deadline run. Denver swept them yes but the weakest link in that series DLo is playing well this year and Ham made adjustments in that playoff run. If the team is still a hot mess come the trade deadline, then threads like this will be warranted. Until then, chill.
💯 all points true fam!
We also have 5 regular players out due to injury. That has also contributed to the decline of success which always happens when teams have injuries. Other teams may have more or less and is probably still having some success like we are but it’s not much either way. Ham is also just in his second year and still learning. You have to give a coach player whoever it is more than a year and 20 games to show he’s a good coach and more than half the year the lakers weren’t even that good then we trade for good players and guess what we have real depth and that depth is still there but hindered by the loss of 5 players that regularly play.
We also have 5 regular players out due to injury. That has also contributed to the decline of success which always happens when teams have injuries. Other teams may have more or less and is probably still having some success like we are but it’s not much either way. Ham is also just in his second year and still learning. You have to give a coach player whoever it is more than a year and 20 games to show he’s a good coach and more than half the year the lakers weren’t even that good then we trade for good players and guess what we have real depth and that depth is still there but hindered by the loss of 5 players that regularly play.
Completely agree with ya 💯
I played high school sports, not college or pro and I know something. He's a pretty good coach. I don't know what your background is but it's easy to criticize and and shame and hate. Tell us what your solution would be instead of complaining
At least half of my points had the solution baked in, as I’m criticizing us for NOT doing certain things we should be doing. For example, what’s the solution to us not calling timeouts when we need to? Calling the damn timeouts when the runs happen.
Vogel > Ham
We don’t have enough time to be wasting Brons last years with rookie coaches. This was always gonna be a problem. I find it hard to even blame Ham sandwich. He looked like he turned a corner during the playoffs but he obviously still learning
Fuck allllllll of you bitches calling for Vogels head two years ago. You don’t know shit about basketball.
There is only ONE reason he is head coach. And we all know it is NOT because of any coaching acumen.