The Lakers should be thankful that both the Warriors and Suns lost the Christmas game, otherwise the Lakers would have been squeezed out of the top 10 in the West, and after losing to the Celtics, the Lakers have only a 2-6 record after the midseason tournament, and they have also suffered a wave of four consecutive losses, which has been miserable recently. Before the mid-season tournament finals, the Lakers ranked 4th in the West, and the team's morale was high, and they were expected to break into the top 3 in the West in one fell swoop. They are just 1.0 wins away from falling out of the play-offs. 10.5 million, goodbye Lakers, James will carry you to win the championship, and the thick eyebrows will be miserable by you sooner or later.
Winning the midseason tournament with a crushing 7-0 record shows that the Lakers have what it takes to compete with any team in the league when they are tight. However, in addition to that, the rest of the Lakers' regular season record is only 10-15, with a winning rate of only 40.0%, you know, this past season, before Willis was traded, the Lakers started the game 10-13, which is better than their record excluding the remaining games of the midseason tournament, what does this mean?
The Lakers this season are very chaotic, in addition to the ups and downs in terms of record performance, the Lakers' rotation is also chaotic, which is one of the reasons why the Lakers have not been able to play consistently, and Ham, as the head coach of the Lakers, his problem is obviously the biggest. James, thick eyebrows, Russell, Reaves, Hachimura, Prince, Reddish, Wood, Hayes, Christie, these 11 players have all entered the Lakers' starting lineup this season, isn't it outrageous? Of course, it must be admitted that the Lakers have experienced some injury troubles, but they do not have a complete system, which is Ham's most fatal problem. For example, Vogel at the beginning, under his defensive system, there was an injury, and the Lakers only needed to make substitutions in the opposite position, which would not destroy the team's chemistry.
But the current Lakers have almost no system to speak of, the most obvious is that at the beginning of the season, due to the Lakers' backcourt combination defense problems, Ham replaced Reaves with Reddish, one is a defense-oriented forward, and the other is a No. 2 player known for his offense, which does strengthen the Lakers' defense, but it also causes the Lakers' starting offense to become unstable, especially the outside projection, once Russell can't find the state, the Lakers' sense of space will be very poor. During this time, because he was still dissatisfied with the starting defense, Ham took Russell directly, and it stands to reason that if it was a substitution, in Vincent's absence, it should be Reeves who was taken to the starter.
As a result, Ham put Vanderbilt in the starting lineup, which looks extremely good defensively, but in fact, the Lakers have conceded a total of 144 points in the first and third quarters of the two regular season games, which is very scary. The reason for this is that the poor offensive space has caused the Lakers' offensive efficiency to decline rapidly, which will naturally give the opponent many opportunities to counterattack. Ham has gradually become the public enemy of Lakers fans, and his amateur coaching ability is very different from his emotional intelligence and speaking ability. Considering that the Lakers have dealt with the locker room conflict of Wei Shao, the sound of Ham getting out of class has become louder.
To be honest, from the perspective of decompressing James and thick eyebrows, the Lakers should change their coach and give up Ham. First of all, although Ham is the coach of the Lakers, more often than not, what we can see is James performing some of the coach's tasks, such as the tactical arrangement of key offensive and defensive rounds, and the cracking of opponents' tactics. The most memorable was the midseason tournament against the Suns, where Reaves almost dropped the ball in the final moments, and the Lakers called a timeout to prevent the tragedy from happening. And this timeout was not shouted by Hamm, but by James, who was standing in front of him. The Lakers were able to win the midseason championship in terms of coaching, and more people are willing to believe that James played a bigger role.
Not to mention the thick eyebrows, his current playing time is still high. Didn't the Lakers find a replacement for the thick eyebrows? The market for base salary centers, Hayes and Wood, the two signings, were very promising at the beginning, although they were not very capable, but in terms of the price of the base salary, they were considered to be great value signings. As a result, Hayes is now mixing 6-10 minutes per game, and Wood was directly scrapped by Ham and fell out of the Lakers' rotation lineup, causing the Lakers to look for a thick eyebrow substitute again.