The Los Angeles Lakers had a golden opportunity to improve their outlook for the 2024 NBA Playoffs earlier this week. With teams ahead of them losing, they had a chance to move up in the Western Conference standings. Instead, they squandered that opportunity by losing to the Golden State Warriors.
Instead of potentially playing their way out of the NBA Play-In Tournament, they may not even get a home game at this point. They still have to hold off the Warriors, who are in 10th place and breathing down their necks.
The Lakers being in the position which they are is shocking to a lot of people. Many analyst thought they had done a good job of upgrading the roster during the 2023 NBA offseason, building upon a team that advanced to the Western Conference Finals last season.
But, there have been a lot of snags along the way. Injuries to key rotation pieces have not helped, but head coach Darvin Ham has come under fire more than once. It seems evident by how players react to him in huddles that he has lost the locker room.
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That is one reason why Zach Buckley of Bleacher Report has listed Ham as one of the coaches around the NBA that are likely to get fired. Los Angeles likely falling woefully short of an NBA title also plays a part in landing on the list.
“The championship-or-bust scale used to evaluate LeBron James-led teams leaves zero margin for error,” Buckley wrote. “Just ask James’ previous skipper with the Purple and Gold, Frank Vogel, who delivered a title run in 2020 and was ousted from his gig less than two years later.”
There is a lot of pressure on Ham to oversee his team finding success in the NBA Postseason. If they fail to get out of the NBA Play-In Tournament or are bounced in the first round, he will almost certainly be on the chopping block.
This feels like a bit of a wasted season for the Lakers. They received relatively healthy campaigns from LeBron James and Anthony Davis but have not been able to capitalize. Some of the decisions Ham has made with the rotation play into that, as his decision-making with lineups at times has left a lot to be desired.
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