Darvin Ham’s stint with the Los Angeles Lakers was, on paper, one of the most bizarre tenures any head coach has ever had in the NBA. In his debut season, he took a roster coming off of the lottery all the way to the Western Conference finals. They opened his follow-up campaign by winning the NBA’s first-ever In-Season Tournament. But by the end of his second season, he was fired.
On Wednesday, Ham, now an assistant coach under Doc Rivers for the Milwaukee Bucks, gave his first extensive comments about the end of his Lakers tenure, and he didn’t hide his disappointment with the team over how it all happened. In an interview with Andscape’s Marc Spears, he said it was “crazy” that he didn’t get more time to grow into the role.
“To do as well as I did, I swear to God, anywhere else I’m probably looking at an extension with what I did,” Ham said. “I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking actual facts. They go from not making it to the playoffs to the final four in the NBA, the conference finals. And then you win the in-season tournament, navigate through all the injuries and win both of your play-in games to get to the playoffs.
“People always talk about us losing to Denver, but they never talk about how we got to Denver. We beat a kick-ass young squad in Memphis and we beat Golden State.”
Did Darvin Ham deserve to be fired by the Lakers?
While Ham would have a point in most contexts, he himself notes that “anywhere else” things would probably be different. Well, the Lakers are not anywhere else. The coach he replaced, Frank Vogel, won a championship two years before he was axed. The Lakers under Rob Pelinka have had a very quick trigger when it comes to coaching changes. In Ham’s case, there was plenty of evidence suggesting the change was warranted.
Reporting from several sources made it clear that Ham had lost the locker room by the end of his second season with the Lakers. After blowing a big lead in Game 2 of their first-round series loss to the Nuggets, Anthony Davis said “we have stretches where we don’t know what we’re doing on both ends of the floor,” which was largely taken as a shot at Ham’s coaching. At media day this season, D’Angelo Russell said that the Lakers didn’t have a “defensive structure” last season.
Ham drew criticism for his strategic decisions as well. The Lakers tended to be slow in making in-game adjustments last season. On one notable occasion, the Lakers allowed Dante Exum to make seven mostly uncontested 3-pointers in a game against the Dallas Mavericks. He didn’t make more than four in any other game a season ago. It took until late in the season to land on a starting lineup featuring the team’s five best players: Davis, Russell, Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura and LeBron James. That lineup helped carry the Lakers into the playoffs, but Ham tried several unpopular units throughout the season before landing on that one.
Yes, first-time head coaches tend to get more than two seasons to prove themselves. And yes, it’s worth asking how much responsibility the Lakers front office bears for the team’s issues considering how many coaches it has now been allowed to hire. But ultimately a coaching change was necessary in Los Angeles.
