"It's been interesting to me, Darvin [Ham] took a lot of s— last year," another Western Conference scout told ESPN. "I think now you're seeing like, 'Oh, maybe it wasn't Darvin. Maybe it's the f—ing roster.'"

He is not the only person among the half-dozen scouts, coaches and front office employees ESPN interviewed to suggest that L.A. needs different players if it expects different results.

"They need to trade for a good point-of-attack defender that can at least be capable of knocking down open shots," an Eastern Conference scout told ESPN. "They don't have many perimeter defenders."

Added another Eastern Conference executive to ESPN: "I don't think they have the personnel to be a good defensive team."

Though Jarred Vanderbilt's expected return next month will give Redick a player with a solid defensive track record to add to the Lakers' rotation, Vanderbilt's offensive limitations are also well documented.

"Honestly, they need what everybody wants," one of the West scouts told ESPN. "It's that versatile wing defender that can guard 2 through 4 and then can make an open 3. Your Mikal Bridges, your OG Anunoby, those type of players. And those guys, either: One, aren't available; or two, if they are available, they're not cheap, they're at a premium. Everybody in the NBA wants guys like that."

Not enough consistency from James and Davis, or players around them

Part of L.A.'s slide has coincided with Austin Reaves snapping his personal iron man streak of 129 straight regular-season games played before missing the past five games because of a left pelvic injury.

Before going out, Reaves had averaged a career-best 16.7 points, adding 4.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.1 steals per game.

"AD and LeBron need consistency from the rest of the group," the East exec said. "The only guy that they rely on is Austin. He finally got to the point of not deferring to those guys. The rest of the group should follow suit. Too many guys don't know how to play with them because they feel like they need to just give AD and LeBron the ball and wait for a pass. They end up forcing shots late-clock because that is when they get the ball."

Another Eastern Conference front office member pointed to L.A.'s second tier of role players failing to make a difference. "Getting very little from Gabe Vincent, Cam Reddish, Christian Wood, Jaxson Hayes has been disappointing," he told ESPN. "One of those guys needs to play better."

Though a Lakers team source told ESPN that one of L.A.'s strengths is that Reaves, D'Angelo Russell or rookie Dalton Knecht is capable of being the leading scorer any game to take the burden off James and Davis, that's still a relative rarity. In 24 games, Davis has been the leading scorer 12 times, James six times, Knecht three times, Reaves twice and Russell once.

As far as a big three goes, the results have been a big negative. The Lakers have a minus-8.4 net efficiency in the 383 minutes that Davis, James and Reaves have played together this season. That's the third-worst net efficiency among 73, three-player combinations to appear on the court together for at least 350 minutes this season.

"If Austin Reaves is your third-best player — and I love Austin, I think he's a very good basketball player — but if he's your third-best player, you're not a championship contender, you're just not," one of the West scouts told ESPN. "If you put Austin Reaves on the Oklahoma City Thunder or the Boston Celtics, he's probably the fifth-, maybe even sixth-best player, on those rosters."

Source: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/42933812/the-three-biggest-reasons-lebron-los-angeles-lakers-flailing-west

41 comments

  2. This was obvious last year

    Darvin was a bad coach but he was also working with an extremely flawed roster.

  3. Both things can be true. Most of us knew Darvin wasn’t the only problem. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t a problem and a big one at that.

  6. Its almost like issues can be multifaceted especially when you have an ass front office and leadership…anyone who is worth their salt knew Darvin was AN issue along with injuries, roster construction and oversight.

  7. No matter how much we suck, no journalist or “anonymous” league sources can gaslight me into thinking Ham was a good coach.

    This guy was fucking trash. End of the story. Nothing more, nothing less.

    GO HARD ON THEM DUDES

  8. It’s both. This roster fucking sucks. It was clear the last two years what the issues were but Rob didn’t do shit to address them.

    Ham was a terrible coach and deserved to be fired. He was not proactive and clearly lost the locker room

  9. People who form this take havent been watching the Lakers.

    Ham had a solid roster at one point. Can’t say the same for Reddick because Ham is why the roster was gutted.

    They had decent bigs under Ham. They are not receiving play time or very I consistent. The front office got rid of them. Now the team is full of guards.

    Reddick doesn’t even have a backup big or real 4s.

    Lakers were much better defensively when they used a big by Davis and had 4s to relieve pressure from Lebron.

    He also had useful point guards and 3 point shooters. They were all taking blame because Ham kept using the small ball or using them inconsistently. They ended up getting traded. reddish had wings but they’re mostly the same type of player. Only of us Gabe Vincent now.

    I wish people would stop acting like the roster that is now is the same roster Ham had. There are some key differences. Ham screwed this team up.

  10. Oh it was both. It was definitely both. There were so games Darvin cost us. We could have been a playoff team without the play in if Darvin was not the coach.

  11. Darvin was bad last year and had lost the locker room.

    The locker room also stinks. Any team with Dlo haw a baseline of unseriousness. Bron and AD don’t have consistent motor for 82 games. 

    Everyone knows changes are needed. Nobody argued otherwise. Slow news days I guess. 

    Ratings are down, better put LAL in the news over and over and over. 

  13. What’s up with this notion that the issues last year had to be mutually exclusive? It was both. The roster wasn’t/isn’t great and Ham made it so much worse with his rotations and god awful schemes.

  14. It’s always been true BUT some people/media like to fixate on one thing as the source of their frustrations…

  16. They had a proven, successful blueprint in 2020.
    Then scrapped it all for no reason.

    It’s perplexing.

  18. Can we just stop? This narrative that maybe it wasn’t Darvin Ham because him and JJ have the same record or that because the roster sucks maybe it wasn’t Ham… JUST STOP! The roster can suck AND Ham can be a shit coach, these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

    Don’t sit there and tell me this man is a good coach, I sat there and watched every game as he constantly changed the rotations up until after all star break and then went back to the starting line up that was the most successful the previous season. I watched him not trust his players enough to spend a timeout on a challenge call and then end the game with multiple time outs.

    Sports media tried to gaslight us into believing what we saw wasn’t what we saw. He lost the locker room because he was incompetent in the players eyes, that speaks volumes.

  19. Darvin was a bad coach. Every time a huddle was mic’d you would hear him using the same tired, pep rally, “feel good” phrases. He wasn’t actually coaching.

    JJ is actually coaching this team and working out plays and adjusting the minutes depending on the opponent or the current needs. He’s actually yelling at and calling out some of these scrubs for their poor performance.

    Both guys have essentially the same team. But one is actively trying to work around it.

  22. “Omg the United Healthcare CEO had a vitamin C deficiency. Maybe it wasn’t the bullets that killed him after all!” – Anonymous Western Conference Scouts

  26. It was both, and if you’re an NBA scout saying it wasn’t both, you’re either completely incompetent or lying.

  27. I’ve been saying it’s the roster forever. Darvin wasn’t perfect, but at the end of the day if your guys aren’t hustling or making their shots it’s not on the coach. It’s on the players and their own effort.

    People seem to be able to understand this concept with JJ, but with Darvin they struggled and just blamed him for 100% of the failure. He was maybe 50-60% of it. The rest is our shit roster (specifically our bench), lack of effort, scoring droughts, and terrible defense. All of which again is basically coming down to our roster. We have to make some moves, sooner rather than later.

  30. Ive said this on another post and I’ll say this again. It is near impossible to build a championship contender with the assets and roster we currently have. We need to plan for the future by trading AD preferably to Atlanta to get our 1st round pick for this year back plus other picks and young players (risacher). If Lebron wants to get traded to a contender them trade him wherever he wants to go.

  31. You know usually these anonymous scouts come from loser teams which makes me no longer care

  32. Sports journalism is for hacks, click bait articles and rage bait for mediocre writers

  33. lol so now that JJ is the coach, it’s got to be the roster? Everyone jumped down Darvin Ham’s throat and perhaps he was a horrible coach, but I’m just shocked that JJ isn’t getting the same level of blame considering JJ had only coached youth basketball prior to being a NBA head coach.

  34. The Lakers roster has been shit since winning the bubble. The Lakers were cheap and didn’t want to extend AC. There are countless moves within the last 7 years that have cost the Lakers.

    The answer is to rebuild and to rebuild that means LeBron retires and AD is traded.

  35. Darvin Ham lost the locker room so regardless of whether he was good or bad he had to go, a coach that doesn’t have at least some level of buy in from the team can’t last on any NBA team let alone this one.

  38. Ham is a motivator. He isn’t a coach you’d want running your team. I think he fits the assistant role better. Two things can be true, that Ham wasn’t the right coach, and the roster maxed itself out and needs to be upgraded.

  41. Idk why reporters have to ask about is from other teams, maybe to embarrass the front office? But you don’t need a genius to see why we suck on the court.

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