Darvin Ham definitely did not have the best start to his life as a head coach in the NBA with the Los Angeles Lakers. In his first gig as the man at the helm, Ham oversaw a terrible 2-10 start to the 2022-23 season but despite that record, there were some positive signs.
His decision to have Russell Westbrook come off the bench paid dividends as Russ began thriving on the court for the first time with the Lakers. He also seemed to have lit a fire inside Anthony Davis as he was starting to dominate games the way he last did back in 2020.
Ham managed to navigate through that rough spell early on and proceeded to lead the team to 5 wins in their next 6 games. All that positivity and optimism surrounding the team seemingly vanished in an instant, however, as the Lakers blew a 17-point fourth-quarter lead in a loss to the Indiana Pacers.
Darvin Ham Takes Responsibility For The Lakers’ Shocking Loss Against The Pacers
LeBron James’ teams were 403-1 when they had a 17+ point lead in the fourth quarter prior to this game, which shows just how bad this collapse really was. James also explained what went wrong for the Lakers in the final sequence, as he said the players messed up the coverage which led to two wide-open threes for Indiana. Andrew Nembhard nailed the second one at the buzzer to hand LA the loss and after the game, Ham took responsibility for the defeat.
"I have to do a better job at keeping us organized." – Darvin Ham takes responsibility for Lakers losing to the Pacers. pic.twitter.com/oRXAtJhn9F
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) November 29, 2022
“I think us not taking advantage in terms of continuing to play downhill, play with force, continue to move the ball. It’s just one of those things, (when) you get a lead like that, the free throw line allows you to maintain your lead. I wish we would have been a lot more aggressive, continue playing with pace and also continue to be organized and move the ball. That falls on me. I’ll take responsibility for that… I have to do a better job of keeping us organized during those stretches offensively.”
It was good on Ham’s part to take responsibility for that collapse but it isn’t all on him. Some of the rotations in the fourth quarter weren’t great, but you would expect a team with 3 future Hall of Famers to keep the opposition at an arm’s length and they weren’t able to do it.
LeBron ended up going 2-8 from the field in the fourth quarter while Davis only attempted two shots, which is simply not good enough. To his credit, AD admitted after the game that the loss wasn’t on Ham and that as players, they should have done better. They’ll get a chance to make amends for this collapse against the Blazers and we should expect some kind of response.
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