The Los Angeles Lakers finally welcomed Gabe Vincent back to the lineup on Wednesday night against the Chicago Bulls. However, his return was marred by a losing effort and Vincent was a minus-12 in 14 minutes of action.
Now, it appears to be back to the drawing board for head coach Darvin Ham as he evaluates the Lakers’ rotation with everyone healthy.
The Lakers have lost three straight games and have not looked particularly strong in any of the outings. And any time a stretch like that occurs, Ham is going to receive some criticism and change may need to take place within the Lakers rotation. The questions for Ham were loud and clear on Wednesday night, and his response was immediate.
Ham is not ready to commit to any specific rotation now that Vincent is back, explaining that he’s going to continue searching for the right lineup combinations to get the Lakers back on track, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Obviously this is not a rotation that’s set in stone. Just trying to allow Gabe to get back out there, get his feet wet a little bit. So we’ll continue to investigate ourselves, try to look at the film, look at different segments, what the numbers are saying and try to land on a good place where we have more consistency.”
And while Ham has always been one to vouch for consistency and has been hesitant to make major changes in the past, he wouldn’t even rule out another change to the Lakers’ starting lineup that has routinely featured LeBron James, Anthony Davis, D’Angelo Russell, Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish.
With that being said though, Ham further elaborated why he’s hesitant to make that significant of a change:
“It’s always an option to do that. You got to look at your group and see what makes the most sense. That’s on one hand. On the other hand, with bodies coming in and out of the lineup, you have to keep some sort of consistency with something. You can’t just keep on a whim, change (the starting lineup). That’s a big deal when you change the starting lineup at this level. So we want to try to be consistent as possible, and again, our circumstances in terms of what we’ve been through the last two and a half or three weeks, also has an effect on our performance. Going across the country back and forth, parking it in L.A. just for a day or two and then you’re back across the country, not up and down the coast. So we’re well-aware of that, it’s not an excuse, it’s just the reality of what we’ve been through. But as we get guys back healthy and guys back in a rhythm, we’re gonna keep coaching them up, our medical team is gonna keep servicing them like they’re supposed to, our guys are gonna take care of themselves and we’ll get better. We’ll get better from this. We’re in the valley right now but we’ll be climbing back up that mountain pretty soon.”
At 28 games in, the regular season is still relatively young, meaning the Lakers have plenty of time to figure out consistency issues and poor rotations. But in a crowded Western Conference, the Lakers also need to make sure they don’t dig too deep a hole. And losing streaks like this can bury a team quickly.
Austin Reaves: Lakers need to win while figuring out lineups
Austin Reaves spoke after the Lakers’ loss to the Bulls, noting that the team needs time to figure out the best lineups and build chemistry now that they’re healthy, but have to win games while doing so.
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