The following news comes from a joint report between Shams and Lakers reporter Jovan Buha, and considering that both reporters are industry giants, the source can basically be regarded as a real hammer.
The core of the report revolves around "Lakers players starting to distrust Ham."
According to two reporters, this distrust stems from the Lakers' extremely low win rate recently.
At the same time, the players began to question Coach Hamm's roster changes and rotations.
Since the Lakers won the midseason, the team has played in 12 games, winning only three of them, and two of those victories have come from the Swing Team.
(Spurs, 5-28, first from last in the West; Hornets, 8-24, third from bottom in the East).
According to reports, the current Lakers players agree that the main reason for the decline in performance is Ham's frequent adjustments to the rotation lineup.
Such frequent personnel transfers have made the playing time of many players unstable, which in turn affects the player's condition.
In just a few months into the 2023-24 season, the Lakers have already fielded a full ten different starting lineups.
One of the lineups that annoyed the locker room players the most was the five starters of death in the Lakers vs Thunder on December 23: James, Prince, Reddish, Van der Biao, and Davis.
This set of starters has James as the core of the ball, focusing on size advantage.
It seems reasonable, but in fact, there are many loopholes.
On the one hand, the 39-year-old James is extremely physically exerted and needs a second ball handler to share the pressure;
On the other hand, using this set of starters means that core Lakers players such as Russell and Reaves must come off the bench.
Some players believe that this is Ham playing with the mentality, and Lakers management is also puzzled by Ham's operation.
One of the most mentioned words by Lakers management this summer is continuity, and they have done just that, offering long-term contracts to players such as Reaves, Russell, and Hachimura.
Obviously, in the eyes of management, Reeves and Hachimura have high-quality performances in the playoffs, and Russell's performance in the regular season is also remarkable.
However, in terms of the deployment of the lineup, Coach Ham has never paid attention to the so-called continuity, and so far, the Lakers have not tried the best lineup.
Russell was relegated to the bench, Reeves has been on the bench for most of the season, and Hachimura has not started much at all, and his playing time has fluctuated sharply.
Coach Hamm had something to say about it:
'Our players need to stay fit and there's no continuity until the whole squad is fully fit, I can just move in and out of different squads, I'm telling you the truth. ”
Reaves and Davis, as representatives of the players, gave their respective opinions in an interview:
Reeves: "If you lose like this, the atmosphere in the team is terrible. ”
Davis: "It's not an excuse to keep it out of lineup, and if it goes on like this, it's going to be very bad. ”
In a situation where both players and coaches have complaints, and both sides dump each other, the solution to the problem is simple.
Either take out the coach or take out the players.
According to this logic, in the near future, Coach Hamm is very likely to be the one to be killed.
Let's predict the time.