One of the things I like to do when watching Lakers basketball is how our coach compares to the coaching of the other team. For a full+ season now one thing has been clear to me, Darvin Ham has no idea what he needs to do in pressure situations and is relying on LeBron to save his ass, it’s was pretty clear last night.
With a team like this, specially that went to the conference finals you would think that Ham learned how to adjust, when to do certain things and adjust, but last night it was an abysmal display of lack of coaching and getting outcoached in every single aspect, again on situations that needed his input he just stays silent, no suggestions from him to players on were to be on certain plays, or if he sees something in the defense how to adjust in real time nothing of that has ever happen with this guy.
We are 11 games into the season and only 2 games has this team been up in the first quarter, think about that, what coach would not find a way 11 games into the season to figure what’s going on? Keeps happening over and over again, and to make it worse, the players have to make an insane amount of effort especially LeBron to take a win in the 4th quarter, this is not how you want your best player to exert energy 11 games in.
Now to what everyone has been seeing since this guy came in, the Memphis game we are up almost 20 pts, they start to chip away at the lead, I knew this guy would never call a timeout until the lead was down to almost 2, what happens? yeap he waits until we are up by 4 to call a damn timeout. To compare this to last night’s game, Mike Brown has his team up on us 24 pts, he sees that the lakers are chipping away and LeBron is getting hot and finding people, lead goes to 19 Mike calls a timeout and has his team settle and continuing to play at a high level, Lakers on the other hand can’t catch up because their coach has no offensive or defensive strategy whatsoever to stop the bleeding, and this happens every damn game.
Some of you might say, well we have injured players, true, but they hired him to Coach, not to cry because you have injuries, all other teams have injuries, it’s part of the game, and you as the main head of the snake, have to find a way to produce with what you got, with what you think is your philosophy which at this point, who honestly thinks that this guy actually has a philosophy? It was pretty clear to me that the Kings philosophy is to push the ball immediately and 2 games against them Lakers have been run over.
Just look at the numbers and they don’t lie, when LeBron is in this team is there competitive still down most game but his +/- when he is in tells the story, the moment that he goes out, all hell brakes lose, no adjustments, no play calling, no adjusting on defense, it’s non existent.
Look all I want to see from this guy is that he is learning and figuring out things to coach, and so far he has shown the opposite, he hasn’t learned from his mistakes, and he keeps repeating them over and over again, this is probably last year of LeBron in LA, and for certain want at least a chance for him to go far, but with Ham right now and the way he coaches specially in wins also, it just isn’t cutting it.
In Ham’s defense, this is not the first time we’ve seen Lebron playing in this 5 out offense where’s there’s little ball movement and player movement. We saw this offense in Cleveland and we saw it with Vogel too. The half-court offense wasn’t that great with Vogel. It was the defense that year that led the way.
So is the problem really Ham or is it that Bron has to play a specific way so he can coast and conserve energy? The Lakers use a 5 out system where guys are standing still and watching the ball handler. This system allows Lebron to rest. When D’Lo has the ball, Bron can stand still in the corner and rest. When Bron has the ball, he can hold it for awhile in order to pace himself.
But imagine a motion style offense where players are constantly moving and setting screens. That would force Lebron to move around more on offense which would make it harder for him to conserve energy. Lebron conserves energy in two ways. He coasts on defense. And on offense, he uses the Lebron system to pace himself.