I keep hearing the same thing every single time it comes to criticism of the Lakers coaching staff, specifically Darvin Ham: “He’s an NBA head coach, he obviously knows best”.

In general, I absolutely agree. There is not a chance in hell I or anyone here is more knowledgeable about the game than these guys, not even close. With that said, however, this doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for viewers to pick up on mistakes that they do make. Furthermore, it does not mean that some of these mistakes aren’t very, very simple things that the coaching staff is just straight up not doing right, plain and simple.

Last game was a perfect example of this. Both Darius and Pete from the LFR podcast, as well as Sean Davis from the Lakers Nation podcast, tore the coaching staff to shreds for this performance. All 3 of these guys are very, very good analysts, especially with regards to scheme and the strengths and weaknesses of various defensive coverages. All 3 of them considered this game the worst gameplan of the season bar none, and for good reason.

Sean Davis in the Lakers Nation post-post-game show went over this in detail. He pointed out 3 games in particular as examples of what the different defensive coverages will do against Philly, particularly with regards to doubling Embiid in the post. Letting Embiid play 1 on 1 in the post is a bad idea no matter who you have guarding him (except Al Horford for some reason), and especially if his primary defender is someone you can’t afford to get in foul trouble, so the only question here is where do you double from?

Case 1: Brooklyn Nets.

The Nets chose to double from the passer, and they got absolutely eviscerated. Embiid finished with 9 assists and 1 turnover, while Maxey and Melton (their two main ballhandlers), combined for 10/17 from 3, and the starting 5 went 12/24 from 3 overall.

Case 2: OKC Thunder.

The Thunder chose to double from the baseline, and though they lost, this strategy did prove somewhat effective. Embiid still got 9 assists, but they forced 4 turnovers, and Maxey and Melton combined this time for 6/17 from 3, and the starting 5 as a whole ended 10/32 from 3. They still made some tough shots, but if you watched the game it was clear that Philly was working hard for their points.

Case 3: Cleveland Cavaliers

Like the Thunder, the Cavaliers decided to double from the baseline. This resulted in Embiid finishing with 5 assists to 6 turnovers, and Maxey and Melton combined for 4/18 from 3, and the starting 5 was 9/30.

This is a small sample size, but both the stats and, more importantly, the eye test back up the notion that doubling from the passer is not effective and only plays to Embiid’s strengths as a passer, while doubling from the baseline forced turnovers and tougher 3s. The plan is clear, if you double, do it from the baseline and not the passer!

Can you guess what we did? We doubled from the passer. What happened? Embiid finished with 11 assists and 3 turnovers, Maxey and Melton shot 8/18 from 3, and the starting 5 overall went 12/28 from 3. Who would’ve thought?

This leads me to the crux of my point: Darvin Ham and the coaching staff made an error that even casual viewers could clearly see would be a mistake well in advance. Now okay, that’s one thing for it to happen once in a regular season game, but the fact is this isn’t the first time we’ve seen an error like this.

In game 2 against Golden State last year, we made the absolutely inexplicable decision to hedge/double Curry ball screens, specifically those involving Draymond. It’s been known for as long as the Warriors have been a top team that hedging Curry ball screens is bad because it frees up Draymond as a short-roll passer where he’s one of the best in the league. Now, with that said, some teams do have the personnel to do this somewhat effectively, but we were not one of those teams.

The obvious choice for us was to simply top-lock the screen, or in other words put pressure between the ball handler and the approaching screen in order to force them away from it. This can open up a driving lane, however with AD in a semi-high drop, he’s still well within reach of recovery to assist the primary defender (though with Dennis’ quickness this actually wasn’t needed all too often, and AD served more as a helper on off screen cutters). This is not possible if AD hedges, as he’s pulled deep beyond the 3 point line, and being our only consistently great defender on power plays like the 4 on 3 created here, we give up an easy layup most of the time. The worst part about this is that not only did we run this and get destroyed in the first half, but we didn’t adjust at halftime. We did eventually switch to top-locking and even occasional switching later in the series, but to make such an obvious mistake even once is unacceptable in such a high stakes game.

The other major error we saw was game 1 against Denver where we, with absolutely no reasonable justification, ran small ball. Now if you want to make the argument that Dennis could guard Murray better than DLo fine, in fact I actually agree and the eventual decision to swap their places in the rotation was a smart one, even if it was far too late when it happened. The issue is that by starting DLo, Austin, and Dennis, that means one of those 3 would have to guard MPJ because Bron had to be on Gordon and AD needed to guard Jokic. Even worse is that it provides more options for the Nuggets to switch hunt into mismatches, because any of those 3 guards getting switched onto Gordon or god forbid Jokic would lead to a nearly guaranteed bucket. The result? We went down by 20 in the first half.

Now, once again, to make that mistake is bad enough, but not only was the mistake made, we began the 2nd half with that same group.

There’s a consistent theme here. Why did we double from the passer on Embiid? Because that’s what we like to run against other teams. Why did we go small against Denver? Because that lineup won us game 6 against Golden State. Why did we hedge on Curry? Because… okay I’m just gonna be honest I genuinely have no clue, it wasn’t even a coverage we ran much in the first place, so it’s even more puzzling why we’d use it there.

Regardless, I think we can all see that the coaching staff is, above all else, stubborn as hell. We see it all the time in the “hot hand gets benched” thing we see from him. He’s not intentionally benching the hot hand, he’s just sticking to rotations he drew up pregame when most coaches would adjust them based on the flow of the game. It makes sense too considering Ham came from Budenholzer’s coaching staff, and Bud was known for being unbearably stubborn about his schemes (it’s literally what got him fired).

Now I’d like to pose a few questions:

Is it possible to win a championship under a coaching staff that will, in all likelihood, lose 1-2 games per series purely off of schematic mistakes they refuse to adjust?

Is there any sign that Ham will or is improving in this regard?

Is moving on from Ham an option as of now? If not, how soon would it be, and would that timeline be beyond our LeBron-led title window?