Lakers dismiss Ham after two mediocre campaigns
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Darvin Ham on Friday after just two seasons in charge.
The Lakers announced on social media that they were dismissing Ham four days after their season ended with a first-round playoff loss to Denver in five games.
Ham led Los Angeles to the Western Conference finals less than a year ago in his first season as an NBA head coach. He had replaced Frank Vogel, who was fired by the Lakers exactly 18 months after winning the franchise’s 17th championship in 2020.
With little time left to capitalize on the concurrent presence of Anthony Davis and 39-year-old LeBron James — who hasn’t decided whether to return for his 22nd NBA season — the Lakers are resetting their coaching staff once again instead of blaming general manager Rob Pelinka for his roster construction.
Ham presided over
adisappointing year for the Lakers, who went 47-35 in the regular season and won the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament. The Lakers then beat New Orleans in a play-in game to move up to the seventh seed in the highly competitive Western Conference — but that meant they had to face Denver, which swept them out of the playoffs last season.
Los Angeles led the defending champion Nuggets for long stretches of their first-round series, but
Nikola Jokic and his teammates eventually rolled into the second round with a series of comeback wins.
The Lakers’ failure stung because James and Davis were largely healthy all year long, with both superstars playing more games than they had managed in an NBA season since 2017-18 — 76 for Davis and 71 for James, the leading scorer in NBA history. D’Angelo Russell also had a strong regular season, setting the franchise record for 3-pointers.
That health and success only translated into a fourwin improvement in the standings from last season, and Ham received much of the blame from fans and observers for his game management, slow tactical adjustments and a reluctance to change his player rotations and starting lineups, even when things weren’t working.
The Lakers fell into a hole they couldn’t escape when they went 3-10 during the holiday period immediately after the
In-Season Tournament finale. Ham was widely criticized for his lineups and rotations during that poor stretch — among other decisions, he curiously benched Russell and Austin Reaves while giving extensive playing time to Taurean Prince and Cam Reddish.
That slump eventually prevented the Lakers from landing a top-6 seed in the West even though they finished the regular season on an impressive 28-14 surge.