Darvin Ham, Lakers players struggling to connect in terms of lineups and rotations: Sources

LOS ANGELES – After their ninth loss in 12 games, the Los Angeles Lakers have reached a new low in their season, adding to concerns about the direction of the season both inside and outside the organization.

There is currently a deepening rift between Darvin Ham and the Lakers’ locker room, say six sources with direct knowledge of the situation, raising questions about the head coach’s status. The people talked to The Athletics on condition of anonymity so that they could speak freely about the matter. These sources have described the incoherence between the coach and the team as stemming from Ham’s extreme rotation and lineup adjustments in the starting lineup recently, which has led to a fluctuating rhythm for several players in the squad.

The Miami Heat, playing without superstar Jimmy Butler, defeated the Lakers 110-96 on Wednesday at Crypto.com Arena. The loss dropped Los Angeles to 17-18 — its first time below .500 since Nov. 11 — and was just .001 percentage points above the Golden State Warriors for No. 10 in the Western Conference. The Lakers are 3-9 since winning the In-Season Tournament in Las Vegas on December 9. They have lost three games in a row and Wednesday night’s defeat led to increasing turbulence.

In the latest attempt to reverse LA’s skid, Ham used his 10th starting lineup of the season and third in three games: Austin Reaves at point guard, Taurean Prince at shooting guard, Cam Reddish at small forward, LeBron James at power forward and Anthony Davis in the middle. The Lakers were minus-3 in the 13 minutes the group played together against Miami on Wednesday.

The latest lineup change continued a troubling trend as the Lakers have struggled to determine their best lineup or establish continuity this season, regardless of how healthy the team has been. Concerns have only increased in recent weeks.

Ham’s decision to bench D’Angelo Russell and start James, Prince, Reddish, Jarred Vanderbilt and Davis in a lineup without a second guard ballhandler starting Dec. 23 in Oklahoma City was viewed internally as a headache by several parties , according to spoken sources. for this story.

The Lakers defended their continuity all summer, including bringing back their top five scorers from the Western Conference finals (James, Davis, Reaves, Russell and Hachimura, in that order). But more than a third of the way into the season, three of these players — and the team’s third, fourth and fifth highest-paid players, Russell, Hachimura and Reaves, respectively — came off the bench. Reaves has come off the bench for most of the season, despite being touted by Ham as a future All-Star over the summer and ranking third on the team in scoring, Russell’s role has shrunk since Las Vegas and Hachimura’s playing time fluctuates every night. base.

After Wednesday’s defeat, the locker room opened before Ham addressed the media, which is rare. Davis spoke first in a soft, dejected manner, refusing to use injuries as an excuse.

“It’s a little bit of everything right now,” Davis said. ‘We don’t execute. That team played harder than us tonight, performed better than us tonight, more physical than us tonight. We’re overworked tonight. So it’s a little bit of everything now. If we continue this trend, it will not be good for us. So it’s pretty obvious that we’re going to have to find out sooner or later.

“The fact that boys are away is no excuse. There are no excuses for us. Like the coach said (pregame), we have enough in this locker room to win, but we just have to go out there and compete.
During Davis’ availability, James, whose locker is right next to Davis’, got dressed and left the locker room without speaking to reporters.

Ham finally spoke to the media 30 minutes after the buzzer. He continued to argue that the Lakers, despite having James, Davis, Reaves and Russell for all but eight games combined, won’t find “any consistency” until they are fully healthy. Hachimura (left calf strain), Russell (tailbone contusion) and Gabe Vincent (left knee surgery) are the three players currently injured.

“We’ve got to get healthy,” Ham said. “…And once you get healthy, the guys have to get back into the rhythm and we have to find a cohesive unit, a totally cohesive rotation that we can go with. When you’re dealing with different guys in and out of the lineup so often, it’s almost impossible to find a rhythm. That’s just being real. That is not a disrespect to anyone.”

Ham then went so far as to suggest that it is easier to play without a star — as the Heat have been without Butler — than for a team to have multiple rotation players in and out of the lineup, as the Lakers do for the majority of players have had. The season.

“I think the multiples (rotation players) have more impact than… when you lose one of your big dogs, you figure out how to get by without them,” Ham said. “… And when you have your key players, your key rotation players, this guy is missing three or four. This guy is missing three or four. And they happen one after another, which makes it difficult. … We have to figure it out. I’m disappointed, but I’ll be damned if I get discouraged.”

When asked if he would consider returning to the team’s original starting lineup of Russell, Reaves, Vanderbilt, James and Davis, Ham said the team is considering every possibility.

“I think everything that makes sense is on the table,” Ham said. “No stone should be left unturned. We’re here to explore what we can to right the ship.”

GO DEEPER

The injury-plagued Lakers have struggled to find “cohesion,” but some issues go beyond just health

Meanwhile, Reaves, speaking after Ham, echoed a similar sentiment to Davis, saying the team cannot use fluctuating lineups as an excuse.

“No matter what the lineup is, what change there is, no matter what happens, we have to be better as a team and start winning games,” Reaves said. “We are more than talented enough to win games. We have sufficient depth. We have enough skills. We have to find out.”

Davis and Reaves’ perspective compared to Ham’s highlights the discrepancy between how the locker room feels about the team’s current issues and how Ham has cited injuries, schedule and lineup changes amid the team’s inconsistency, especially since the IST.

Ham confirmed after the game that the team had a team meeting afterwards, which is partly why it took so long for the locker room to open. By the time Davis spoke to the media, the rest of the players in the Lakers’ locker room were gone. Reaves said the atmosphere in the locker room is “sh-y.”

“We’re losing,” Reaves said. “Every time you lose, the atmosphere has to be off, you know? If I went in there and the atmosphere wasn’t gone after the tough stretch we’ve had, I’d be concerned.

He later clarified that the atmosphere isn’t about the players not liking each other, which was a notable difference considering where the locker room was this time last season.

“When I say the atmosphere isn’t good, it’s not that we don’t like each other,” Reaves said. ‘It’s that we’re losing. We should be angry. We cannot be happy with how we are playing after games. But I don’t want to get so twisted that we don’t like each other. Everyone in the locker room gets along.”

These Lakers have experienced their share of adversity in Ham’s nearly two years as head coach, including a 2-10 start a season ago that ended with a berth in the Western Conference finals. So Ham has shown in the second year of a four-year coaching contract that he can reach his players. But time is of the essence around 39-year-old James and Davis, and as Ham have tinkered with lineups and adjustments in recent weeks, patience is starting to wear thin.

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(Photo by Darvin Ham: Harry How/Getty Images)