**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins

Title window is closed. At this point it’s about dignity and entertainment. Keep the picks. Try and flip Russ if possible but don’t get fleeced (unlikely given Rob hasn’t won a single trade so far (he won the ad trade technically bc we won a title but he still overpaid). Plan for future and hope for the best. Enjoy the games. Don’t overanalyze. Who cares.
 


The most important endorsement hit the Twittersphere at 5:45 p.m. in Los Angeles.

“I’m so damn EXCITED,” LeBron James wrote.

Darvin Ham is his new coach.

LeBron is happy.

And today that’s what matters.

We will learn a lot in the next 12 months about what kind of coach the Lakers have in the rookie Ham, 48, a respected Milwaukee Bucks assistant who is seen as long overdue for a move into the spotlight. He comes with a big reputation as a communicator. And when it comes to unifying a splintered locker room, league insiders believe he has the goods.

No, he’s never been a head coach.

Or worked under a microscope as he will in L.A.

Or had to solve a riddle quite like Russell Westbrook, if the former MVP sticks around.

But LeBron believes in Ham. With a few keystrokes, the toughest person to impress gave his public approval and Lakers Nation could relax.

Three years ago, Ty Lue balked, Monty Williams took the exit ramp to Phoenix and the Lakers came away from their coaching search badly bruised.

Now, 47 days after Frank Vogel’s three-year run ended with an injury-riddled, 33-win campaign, hiring Ham feels something like healing.

Those who know Ham say he has an unteachable presence about him. He can hold players accountable. And not just role players. Stars, too. He understands locker room dynamics with eight years in the NBA as a player. He won a ring as Mike Budenholzer’s favorite assistant in Milwaukee.

In other words, he’s got juice.

And sources said he blew the Lakers away with his understanding of X’s and O’s.

Somewhere along the way, he won the approval of James.

In an offseason where hiring a coach felt mostly like ordering drinks before settling in for the main course at a nice restaurant, getting James on board is the most important piece of this challenging Lakers puzzle.

Vogel was a fine coach. His defensive acumen rescued the Lakers after years in a defensive abyss. He was the right man for a complicated time.

But no matter how strongly you might feel that the disappointments of the last two seasons were not his fault, it became increasingly clear throughout last season that James was ready for a new voice.

That’s Ham.

And LeBron is on board.

A quick history lesson: The Lakers once went 90 days without a head coach.

It was 2014. The Lakers won 27 games and Mike D’Antoni quit. With Kobe Bryant entering his 19th season, it quickly became clear that they were going to hire Byron Scott. The Lakers knew, Byron knew and fans knew. But the Lakers kept their coaching job open as a carrot to potential free agents in a star-laden class.

As one Lakers executive said at the time: “What if LeBron wants his brother to coach the team?”

Point taken.

And the point is that nobody wields more influence than James. He had no interest in the Lakers eight years ago, and his opinion on the Lakers coach mattered.

How much of a factor do you think it is eight years later, now that he’s entrenched in L.A. with a championship ring to show for it.

If his true feelings about Ham were reflected in his tweet, that will resonate throughout the Lakers locker room.

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating. In the Lakers universe, James is the sun, and everyone else is just space flotsam. No matter who ends up on the team next season, you can be sure they will look up to James. They’ll follow his lead.

He trusts Ham? They’ll trust Ham.

That’s a level of alignment the Lakers sorely need, especially after the malcontented Russell Westbrook revealed just how unhappy he was with Vogel throughout his maiden Lakers season.

And make no mistake: Vogel was not fired on April 11. Not really. He was fired when the Lakers gave him a one-year contract extension last summer, months after leading the Lakers to their 17th championship under the most bizarre set of circumstances in league history.

The Lakers put him in the friend zone.

As coaches like to say, it is what it is.

Vogel was the beneficiary of a botched coaching search. In 2019, Pelinka was too rigid, too cocksure.

And so this hire says a lot about Pelinka, too. This time there were no fireworks. No egg on his face. Just a disciplined, patient process, that ended with the Lakers landing their top choice.

The fact that this was a four-year deal, compared to the stingy three-year pact Pelinka was peddling in 2019, shows a willingness to respond to the marketplace. Sources said Ham has been assured he will have autonomy to hire his coaching staff.

Is it possible the Lakers are learning from their mistakes?

If only that carries over beyond their coaching search …

Because the fate of the Lakers next season and beyond will be decided in June and July more than it was on May 27.

Everyone knows the weightiest decisions lie on the other side of the Lakers hiring a head coach.

How can Pelinka build out a winning roster? Should he trade Westbrook? Extend LeBron?

Those are the big-ticket items.

As one skeptical source told The Athletic this week, “I don’t know if a coach can fix them.”

Ham alone can’t be the solution.

He is now partnered with Pelinka and Kurt Rambis in building a roster that can contend. It will be difficult, especially if Westbrook remains on the roster.

Optimism always abounds in the afterglow of a coaching hire. Ham has his work cut out for him with a roster that, barring a Westbrook trade, will largely be built out once again with minimum contracts in free agency.

It’s not an easy job.

But he’s already done the hardest thing.

Won over LeBron James.
 
pmatic said:


The most important endorsement hit the Twittersphere at 5:45 p.m. in Los Angeles.

“I’m so damn EXCITED,” LeBron James wrote.

Darvin Ham is his new coach.

LeBron is happy.

And today that’s what matters.

We will learn a lot in the next 12 months about what kind of coach the Lakers have in the rookie Ham, 48, a respected Milwaukee Bucks assistant who is seen as long overdue for a move into the spotlight. He comes with a big reputation as a communicator. And when it comes to unifying a splintered locker room, league insiders believe he has the goods.

No, he’s never been a head coach.

Or worked under a microscope as he will in L.A.

Or had to solve a riddle quite like Russell Westbrook, if the former MVP sticks around.

But LeBron believes in Ham. With a few keystrokes, the toughest person to impress gave his public approval and Lakers Nation could relax.

Three years ago, Ty Lue balked, Monty Williams took the exit ramp to Phoenix and the Lakers came away from their coaching search badly bruised.

Now, 47 days after Frank Vogel’s three-year run ended with an injury-riddled, 33-win campaign, hiring Ham feels something like healing.

Those who know Ham say he has an unteachable presence about him. He can hold players accountable. And not just role players. Stars, too. He understands locker room dynamics with eight years in the NBA as a player. He won a ring as Mike Budenholzer’s favorite assistant in Milwaukee.

In other words, he’s got juice.

And sources said he blew the Lakers away with his understanding of X’s and O’s.

Somewhere along the way, he won the approval of James.

In an offseason where hiring a coach felt mostly like ordering drinks before settling in for the main course at a nice restaurant, getting James on board is the most important piece of this challenging Lakers puzzle.

Vogel was a fine coach. His defensive acumen rescued the Lakers after years in a defensive abyss. He was the right man for a complicated time.

But no matter how strongly you might feel that the disappointments of the last two seasons were not his fault, it became increasingly clear throughout last season that James was ready for a new voice.

That’s Ham.

And LeBron is on board.

A quick history lesson: The Lakers once went 90 days without a head coach.

It was 2014. The Lakers won 27 games and Mike D’Antoni quit. With Kobe Bryant entering his 19th season, it quickly became clear that they were going to hire Byron Scott. The Lakers knew, Byron knew and fans knew. But the Lakers kept their coaching job open as a carrot to potential free agents in a star-laden class.

As one Lakers executive said at the time: “What if LeBron wants his brother to coach the team?”

Point taken.

And the point is that nobody wields more influence than James. He had no interest in the Lakers eight years ago, and his opinion on the Lakers coach mattered.

How much of a factor do you think it is eight years later, now that he’s entrenched in L.A. with a championship ring to show for it.

If his true feelings about Ham were reflected in his tweet, that will resonate throughout the Lakers locker room.

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating. In the Lakers universe, James is the sun, and everyone else is just space flotsam. No matter who ends up on the team next season, you can be sure they will look up to James. They’ll follow his lead.

He trusts Ham? They’ll trust Ham.

That’s a level of alignment the Lakers sorely need, especially after the malcontented Russell Westbrook revealed just how unhappy he was with Vogel throughout his maiden Lakers season.

And make no mistake: Vogel was not fired on April 11. Not really. He was fired when the Lakers gave him a one-year contract extension last summer, months after leading the Lakers to their 17th championship under the most bizarre set of circumstances in league history.

The Lakers put him in the friend zone.

As coaches like to say, it is what it is.

Vogel was the beneficiary of a botched coaching search. In 2019, Pelinka was too rigid, too cocksure.

And so this hire says a lot about Pelinka, too. This time there were no fireworks. No egg on his face. Just a disciplined, patient process, that ended with the Lakers landing their top choice.

The fact that this was a four-year deal, compared to the stingy three-year pact Pelinka was peddling in 2019, shows a willingness to respond to the marketplace. Sources said Ham has been assured he will have autonomy to hire his coaching staff.

Is it possible the Lakers are learning from their mistakes?

If only that carries over beyond their coaching search …

Because the fate of the Lakers next season and beyond will be decided in June and July more than it was on May 27.

Everyone knows the weightiest decisions lie on the other side of the Lakers hiring a head coach.

How can Pelinka build out a winning roster? Should he trade Westbrook? Extend LeBron?

Those are the big-ticket items.

As one skeptical source told The Athletic this week, “I don’t know if a coach can fix them.”

Ham alone can’t be the solution.

He is now partnered with Pelinka and Kurt Rambis in building a roster that can contend. It will be difficult, especially if Westbrook remains on the roster.

Optimism always abounds in the afterglow of a coaching hire. Ham has his work cut out for him with a roster that, barring a Westbrook trade, will largely be built out once again with minimum contracts in free agency.

It’s not an easy job.

But he’s already done the hardest thing.

Won over LeBron James.
Click to expand...

Here comes the overanalaysis. Lol. Day damn 1
 
Feels good to get some good news about the Lakers man. I got a good feeling about the Ham era.


I wouldn’t buy too much into the Lakers want Ham to make it work with Russ angle some of y’all are getting worked up about.

1. The lakers have to publicly have this stance. They have to back russ and act like last season was a fluke. No matter how stupid it sounds. You don’t **** on an asset no matter what. You have to keep any leverage possible.

2. We do not need to get off picks to get rid of this contract. It’s 45 million expiring. That’s valuable af. If we need to attach picks it’s not worth it. I would hold him until the deadline in that case. Non-contending teams love to shed salary when they find out they won’t be competing. I would argue a 45 million dollar expiring contract is one of the most valuable items available during the trade deadline.

Only downside of this scenario is you only get 2-3 months with your core before making a title run but whatever. Regardless, I’d go that route over attacking picks to get rid of Russ right away.
 
They're gonna dig too big of a hole if they wait until the trade deadline to unload Westbrick.

Running it back with Bron, AD, Westbrick, THT, Nunn, the kids, MLE signing and six minimum signings is a disaster in waiting.
 
Lakers hire Darvin Ham: What the head-coaching move means for LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Los Angeles' NBA title hopes
How can new coach Darvin Ham help the Los Angeles Lakers get back in NBA title contention?

On Friday, just before Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported the Lakers have decided on the longtime Milwaukee Bucks assistant as the replacement for Frank Vogel, who was fired on April 11.

Ham came with Mike Budenholzer to Milwaukee from the Atlanta Hawks and was part of the Bucks' overnight development into contenders, culminating in the 2021 title.

As recently as 2020, the Lakers were still center stage at this point of the playoffs en route to the 17th championship in franchise history. In the subsequent two years, they've won just two playoff games, missing out on even the play-in tournament by finishing this season 11th in the Western Conference.

Undoubtedly, the Lakers' problems began with a deeply flawed roster following last summer's trade for guard Russell Westbrook. How can Ham try to make the most of a group that looks unlikely to change dramatically? And how can the Lakers' front office put their new coach in better position to succeed than Vogel?

Let's look at the task ahead in Lakerland.

How Ham can maximize Westbrook

The first challenge for Ham and his coaching staff -- which will include assistants with NBA head-coaching experience, per Wojnarowski -- is to maximize Westbrook's value during the final year of his contract. Giving up draft picks to trade Westbrook or taking on bad longer-term contracts makes little sense for the Lakers, so Ham should plan to have him on the roster.

The best way to maximize the former MVP is to make sure Westbrook plays with four shooters at all times. Last season, lineups with Westbrook and either Dwight Howard or DeAndre Jordan were outscored by 8.6 points per 100 possessions outside of garbage time with an offensive rating that ranked in the 12th percentile league-wide according to Cleaning the Glass. And while the Lakers were always better off with smaller lineups, those with Howard or Jordan but not Westbrook were more competitive (minus-4.3 net rating with an offensive rating near the NBA average).

Having seen the way adding stretch-5 Brook Lopez opened things up for Giannis Antetokounmpo and the rest of the Milwaukee offense, Ham probably doesn't need to be sold on the value of shooting. Since there's nobody like that on the Lakers' roster or likely to be added this offseason, starting Anthony Davis at center is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Getting buy-in from Davis on this plan will be key. While he has previously resisted a full-time role in the middle, last season's results might make it easier to convince him. (The Lakers could also consider playing him at power forward at times with Westbrook on the bench.)

Next, Ham needs to sell Westbrook on adjusting his game -- something we've yet to see since he left the Oklahoma City Thunder. As ESPN's Zach Lowe highlighted last summer, involving Westbrook as a screener is an ideal way to minimize his shortcomings as a spot-up shooter.

The 2021-22 Lakers tried this strategy for precisely one game. According to Second Spectrum tracking, Westbrook set eight screens in the team's second outing of the season, a home loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. Per Second Spectrum, Westbrook never again set more than four screens in a game all season.

Without being in the coaches' office, we don't know how much Vogel's staff pushed the idea of using Westbrook as a screener and what kind of pushback the staff got from him. Thanks to the combination of his long-term contract and Westbrook's expiring one, Ham should enter those discussions with greater leverage than Vogel had.

Defining the rotation

Instability marked the Lakers' 2021-22 season. They started 41 lineups in 82 games, second most in the NBA behind the Brooklyn Nets (43), and were the only team not to have a single five-man grouping play at least 100 minutes together.

This wasn't all the coaching staff's fault. The Lakers were hit by repeated injuries to key players, and the top-heavy nature of the roster forced them to sort through a series of role players signed for the veterans minimum, most of whom proved lacking.

The Lakers won't have much more spending flexibility this season, when they'll surely be limited to the taxpayer midlevel exception to add in free agency, but the front office can help Ham and his staff by adding more young talent to the bench. The younger players the Lakers did sign, including Malik Monk as well as undrafted rookie Austin Reaves and midseason addition Stanley Johnson, proved more effective than the past-their-prime veterans the team brought in.

More young players on the bench will also help Ham keep everyone happy with their role, as they'll come in with fewer expectations of immediate playing time. After the Lakers passed on using any of the cash teams are allowed to pay in trades to mitigate their luxury tax bill before the deadline, ESPN's Bobby Marks noted they have the full $6.3 million available to buy multiple second-round picks.

Once the roster is built, the onus will be on Ham to sort through rotation options as quickly as possible to find groups that can build more chemistry than last season.

Try to get LeBron back on board with load management

As the NBA's other stars trend toward taking off more games for load management -- even if the league's rules now lead to rest days officially being considered minor injuries -- James has pushed back. After sitting out six games to rest in 2015-16 and five in 2016-17, James hasn't missed any for that reason since while criticizing the concept of load management.

LeBron did make some concessions to his age in terms of minutes per game in 2019-20 (34.6) and 2020-21 (33.4), the two lowest averages of his career. With Davis missing extended periods due to injury and the Lakers needing all hands on deck, that changed last season, when James' playing time bumped back up to 37.2 MPG -- fifth highest among players who saw action in at least 50 games.

Given LeBron's injuries have typically been acute, including the ankle sprain that ended his 2021-22 regular season, it's hard to draw a connection between his reluctance to rest and missing at least 26 games in three of his four seasons with the Lakers. And as he's prone to note, nobody knows James' body better than he does. Still, as LeBron approaches 38 years old, a more conservative approach with regard to playing time might be appropriate.

It's at least worth a new coaching staff having the conversation about load management with James.

Tweaks at the coaching level won't be as important for the 2022-23 Lakers as AD and LeBron staying healthy and Westbrook performing at a higher level than he did during his first season with the Lakers. If those trends don't reverse, no coach the Lakers could have hired would save them.

Still, modest changes from Ham can help maximize their chances of getting back to the playoffs -- and possibly even advancing in them.
 
nermindee said:
cool
Click to expand...
1653765285577.jpeg


Bet
 
nermindee said:
lol talk about thinking too hard... there is no point being made here dummy, I'm just stating that is all I know about Darvin Ham from memory... Laker fans are so defensive when it comes to the stupidest things
Click to expand...
Don’t post stupid unnecessary comments then
 
pmatic said:
They're gonna dig too big of a hole if they wait until the trade deadline to unload Westbrick.

Running it back with Bron, AD, Westbrick, THT, Nunn, the kids, MLE signing and six minimum signings is a disaster in waiting.
Click to expand...

This team isn't winning a title regardless and Russell Westbrook's trade value only goes up the longer we keep him. If we wait until the trade deadline, there might be a distressed superstar who wants out and a team looking for a huge expiring contract.
 
atlsfinest said:
This team isn't winning a title regardless and Russell Westbrook's trade value only goes up the longer we keep him. If we wait until the trade deadline, there might be a distressed superstar who wants out and a team looking for a huge expiring contract.
Click to expand...
What if AD goes nuclear like we expected him to?
 
Best case scenario for us is a Covington/powell type trade mid season. Expiring Russ contract for two Powell/Covington caliber player would be an absolute steal. Powell is great for the 20 mill or so he makes.

Or who knows. Whatever team trades for jerami grant and gives him 25 mill a year and immediately regret it etc. maybe even the blazers. Say they trade for grant and sign him to a max. Then Lillard wants out mid season and they have a fire sale. Lillard goes elsewhere (bc he’d be looking for 50 mill a year and that’s not wise for us) and we go after grant and Nurkic for Russ’s expiring and a 2nd. All unlikely but best case is the above mentioned trade type
 
atlsfinest said:
This team isn't winning a title regardless and Russell Westbrook's trade value only goes up the longer we keep him. If we wait until the trade deadline, there might be a distressed superstar who wants out and a team looking for a huge expiring contract.
Click to expand...
I don't think they have to give up a FRP to get rid of Westbrick in June/July.

It's difficult to exchange $47M+ mid-season, so I rather get it over with in the off-season.
 
Did someone say Drew Peterson?
(Cameo by Stanley Johnson)

This is a private gym in Irvine. I played pickup there during lockdown. Sick mural on the wall!

 
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