Before the Los Angeles Lakers snapped their four-game losing streak with an impressive win against the Oklahoma City Thunder, head coach Darvin Ham made a change to the starting lineup.
Ham benched D’Angelo Russell in favor of Jarred Vanderbilt, opting to go for more length and defense with the Lakers lineup. It worked as the Lakers were able to pick up a victory, though the lineup clearly has some kinks to work out.
Russell had been playing poorly up to that point but he responded to the benching with a 15-point performance in the win.
Before their Christmas Day matchup against the Boston Celtics, Ham revealed he spoke with Russell about the move and the two agreed to do what’s best for the team.
“I really liked our conversation,” Ham said. “We had a sitdown, one-on-one, and he shared a lot of things, I shared some things, but at the end of the day, I think we both landed on that it’s all about winning. How can we best put ourselves in the position to get wins?
“He’s a trooper. No one likes whether it’s being taken out of the starting lineup, being taken out of the rotation. But when you have a deep team and you get bodies back or something is not quite going right and you’re on a little bit of a slide, you have to be real. You have to look yourself in the mirror and be real about what can I do better, what can we do better. So it’s just how you articulate things and the best way to do it is based in fact.
“So the fact of the matter was that we were in a four-game slide. The one thing we’re been able to do consistently is play defense, starting from the trade deadline last year all the way up to this year being a top-10 defense. So we wanted to lean into what we’re doing well and allow that to be the foundation that spreads out to the rest of the segments or our game and how we can be productive.
“But the one-on-one conversation we had was great. He’s free to communicate with me, we’re both respectful, and we shared things but again, we landed on that whatever we can both do to help the team be successful, we need to try and look at it.”
Russell publicly said he wasn’t concerned about being benched, but it remains to be seen if he’ll be happy with it the rest of the way.
Cam Reddish: new Lakers lineup must improve energy
Cam Reddish remained in the starting lineup because of his defense and he said the key to the new group is to keep bringing the energy on both ends.
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