The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a disappointing defeat on Sunday night, coming back to force overtime against the Sacramento Kings before losing 132-127, dropping to 1-2 on the young season.
Even though it’s only been three games, the Lakers’ play has left much to be desired to start the year, as has their coaching.
Darvin Ham and his staff are still in the process of figuring out what lineups work best, and after the loss to the Kings, he discussed what he’s looking for when he makes his lineup decisions, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Just guys who are competing hard. I think they’re all trying, guys are competing and making plays. I don’t want my team to be on of these teams that tries to play mistake-free. I love competitive mistakes, but at the end of the day, we got to be able to execute, we got to be able to get stops and hold teams to one possession. So if you’re defending, if you’re competing at a high level, if you’re sharing and sacrificing on the offensive end, allowing us to get the type of looks we’re looking for, then sure enough you’ll be out there on the floor. But having said that, we had a lot of guys that contributed today. We have a really, really good roster. Again, it takes time. This is the third game of the season and we’ll look at the film and get better from it.”
Ham specifically pointed to his rotations and lineups as something he needs to dig into to improve:
“At the end of the day, making a decision, things like my rotation. We got to really dig into that and really figure out and really take a close look and make sure guys are in rhythm. We have a great collection of players and I played in this league. When you know when you’re going in, who you’re playing with, that matter. So buckling down on our rotation, I’ll start there. That definitely is the main thing that’s on my mind. Obviously I don’t want to run Bron into the ground, I don’t want to run AD into the ground too early. Obviously it was an overtime game tonight and they’re playing at a high level so you want to leave the, out there, but just having that balance. And again, it’s all predicated on player performance as well. Guys got to perform. But for me, again, just really taking a look, and we’ve been doing it, my staff has been doing a hell of a job with me trying to figure this thing out. But just doing an even deeper dive in terms of our rotation.”
Ham’s rotations have been all over the place to start the season with the latest examples being the benching of Christian Wood and Rui Hachimura against the Kings. Wood had it going in the first half with 11 points off the bench although only saw the floor for three minutes in the second half and overtime.
Meanwhile, Hachimura had eight points in the first three minutes of the fourth quarter to give the Lakers their first lead before promptly going to the bench, where he remained for the rest of the night.
The Lakers’ backcourt has also struggled, so Ham will need to figure out which combinations between D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves and Gabe Vincent work best to get some more production out of them.
The good news is that it’s only been three games and there are 79 more to go in the regular season. The Lakers want to avoid their poor 2-10 start from last year though, so it would be advantageous for Ham to get his lineups figured out sooner rather than later so L.A. can begin racking up wins.
Ham explains why Reddish has gotten minutes of Christie
One other rotation decision that Ham has made through the first three games is playing Cam Reddish over Max Christie as the backup shooting guard. He recently explained why that is the case despite Christie’s outstanding Summer League.
“Just his size. Max is a part of us, he’s gonna be a part of us for a long time to come. Still a young player, developing,” Ham said. “Cam having had more games under his belt, his size, athleticism, they’re both phenomenal basketball players but just wanted to get a look at what Cam can do at the outset of things.”
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