The New York Knicks are a very good team. Under the tutelage of Iron Coach Thibodeau, their tactical execution and defensive quality have been at the forefront of the league for the past two years, and they are now 14-11 and fifth in the East.
"Big Boss" Bronson is also an extremely good player. Averaging 25.5 points and 5.9 assists per game this season, he just scored 50 points to blow up the Suns, and the only guards who can beat him in the East this year are Haliburton and Maxey.
But that doesn't mean the Lakers have a reason to lose 109-114 at home to them in an extremely puzzling and infuriating way.
Facing the Knicks, who experienced the last game of the Western Conference's four-game losing streak, the Lakers still couldn't play in the first quarter and fell behind 27-35.
In the second quarter, as usual, they began to fill in the holes and chase points, and in the face of the defensive pressure brought by Vanderbilt, the Knicks also suffered an offensive shutdown, and the Lakers went on an 8-0 run to overtake 58-57 before halftime.
But in the third quarter, the Lakers collapsed in the end after being entangled with the opponent for a long time, and the Knicks hit a three-pointer to play 8-0 and enter the final quarter with a ten-point advantage.
But now in the fourth quarter, the Lakers no longer have the toughness and focus they had at the beginning of the season, and finally won 114-109 by the Knicks after multiple failed counterattacks.
After suffering two straight losses and sitting in eighth place in the West with 15 wins and 12 losses, they will next experience a wave of five away games and two home games, against the Celtics, Timberwolves (twice), Thunder, Pelicans and the Bulls, who have been on a hot streak lately.
The Lakers have spit out the good momentum of winning the midseason game with great difficulty, and in the next devil's schedule, facing the Rockets, Suns and Warriors who are chasing behind, the ranking is likely to continue to decline.
Self-inflicted, can't live, "Coach Cephalosporin" Hamm can't escape the blame this time.
Facing the Knicks, who have an All-Star interior Randle and like to use a double-height lineup, today's Ham still puts on Prince as the starting lineup with the No. 3 position, LeBron and the thick eyebrows as the inside.
This has been the Lakers' usual routine this season, and with Vanderbilt resting and Hachimura sitting on the bench, it is a relatively balanced approach on both ends of the floor.
But the problem is that the Knicks' interior line is fierce, today's injured starting center Mitchell Robinson frontcourt rebounds first in the league (5.3), backup center Hattenstein 2.8 frontcourt rebounds 12th in the league, plus the big Buffalo Randle, their impact on the Lakers' interior is much higher than ordinary opponents.
Today, with starting center Sims retiring from the opening game, the Knicks grabbed 11 more rebounds (52:41) than the Lakers, including 14 for Randle and 17 for Huttenstein, including 7 frontcourt rebounds!
In the case that James did not give his best Zhan, the Lakers suffered a comprehensive loss of the interior line because of the disadvantage in size.
This ball can be called the "eye of the game" of this game, Randle forced James to squeeze into the inside, and the thick eyebrows had to help defend but missed Harden behind him, even if Randle missed the shot, he also completed the frontcourt rebound and suppressed the Lakers' final counterattack.
Although James had 25 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in this game, he hit 11 of 23 shots, which belongs to the usual "recuperation mode" to play.
In the absence of full strength, the only thing that the Lakers can really support the thick eyebrows is Reddish, who is in foul trouble in this game, and Prince, who is 1.96 meters tall and is already 30 years old, is already difficult to protect.
To a large extent, he is the "barometer" of the Lakers in this game.
He scored nine points on 3-of-7 shooting in the first half, and even hit a buzzer-beating three-pointer to give the Lakers the lead. But in the second half, there was a sudden power outage, and he shot 0 of 6, and almost all of them were open shots outside the three-point range.
The Knicks compressed the defense to block the thick eyebrows who scored 32 points and 14 boards in this game and James who began to exert his strength in the second half, but the vacant space "reserved" for the Lakers was almost never punished.
In the fourth quarter, the Knicks almost "invited" Prince to shoot from the outside, but his continuous hitting made the Lakers sad.
But Van Prince could make a three-pointer in the second half, and the Lakers won the game.
The offensive end does not contribute and becomes the point where the opponent is empty, and the defensive end becomes the object of the opponent's explosion, and lacks the protection of rebounds.
As a former part of Ham's time with the Hawks, Prince has gained a lot of trust since coming to the Lakers, starting all 25 games this season.
But the 30-year-old forward who has a 3-and-D foothold in the league is averaging 9.5 points per game and shooting 37 percent from three-point range this season. Once the iron is played on the offensive end, it quickly becomes the weakness of the Lakers on both offensive and defensive ends, and even makes Hachimura, who performed well last season, completely lose his feeling.
Prince is worthy of his $4.6 million annual salary, but not worthy of the starting spot the Lakers have given him.
The most important reason why the Lakers were able to rise strongly in the late stage last season was a series of operations before and after the Wei Shao trade, which made the Lakers' previously bullied multi-guard lineup suddenly have Hachimura and Vanderbilt, two outsized and versatile forwards.
Vanderbilt's energy on both ends of the floor, as well as his high-quality lead defense, put the pressure on James to drop dramatically.
Hachimura, on the other hand, relied on his size and projection advantages to first occupy the Lakers' main rotation, and even became Zhan Mei's number one partner in the playoffs after Vanderbilt was targeted.
However, this season, after a three-year contract extension of 51 million, both playing time and tactical status are not as good as last season in the Lakers. No way, a large part of his time was "eaten" by Prince.
On the defensive end, the fragmented playing time and the variety of lineups also made him feel no good, and he had lost the confidence that the previous misalignment would not suffer from anyone.
Today, Randall was so frightened that Hamm didn't dare to use him in the end.
It's purely self-inflicted.
Ham still doesn't seem to realize that the Lakers' headwind rise last season, including the Lakers' mid-season Cup win this season, is largely due to the Lakers' size advantage in the frontcourt.
Vanderbilt's injury is a pity, but Hayes, Wood, and Hachimura still give him the last muscle permutations around James.
But because of Prince, he's Xi putting a small forward in the number three position. While not guaranteeing the quality of the projection, the team lost its natural size advantage in height, confrontation and defense.
The mid-season Cup triumph made Hamm fluttering, and it seems to have strengthened the tactical thinking and inherent system of this season.
But as James enters "sage time," the team's control of the game seems to be back on the brink of the playoffs, and three losses in four games after the midseason, including sending warmth to the Spurs and losing at home to New York, have proved that he has not been able to reuse Prince this season.
The Lakers didn't take advantage of the most relaxed and friendly schedule in December, and they fell in the Western Conference standings.
Next, facing the Celtics and Timberwolves, the No. 1 team in the East and West, there are already two young and talented youth teams, the Thunder and Pelicans, and the schedule is devilish.
Ham himself scrapped the forward rotation and tactical system that brought him as a rookie coach into the Western Conference last season, and finally was punished in the last month of 2023.
Now that the Lakers have not recovered from Vanderbilt's injury and Vincent continues to recuperate, if they don't make changes and corrections, they may have to catch up again in the second half of last season.
Without Wei Shao this time, how should Hamm explain?