Everything’s suddenly coming up roses for the Lakers as the first preview of head coach Darvin Ham’s new look starting lineup and rotation powered Los Angeles to a dominating 120–102 coast-to-coast win over New Orleans.
Two days after proclaiming Schröder and Russell as his starting backcourt, Darvin Ham reversed course and unveiled a new innovative starting lineup for Wednesday night’s game that could change everything for the Lakers.
Darvin Ham’s surprising new Lakers’ starting lineup has D’Angelo Russell at point guard, Malik Beasley at shooting guard, Jarred Vanderbilt at small forward, LeBron James at power forward, and Anthony Davis at center.
The new lineup addresses the Lakers’ two greatest needs: a pair of volume 3-point shooting guards with gravity to create spacing and a bigger wing defender who can guard opposing team’s leading scorer at all three levels.
Russell, Beasley, and Vanderbilt played together on the Timberwolves, which made their first integration with James and Davis smoother and easier as the Lakers suddenly looked like a potential playoff juggernaut.
Right now, the 27–32 Lakers have 23 games remaining on their regular season schedule, that restarts next Thursday against the Warriors. The Lakers need to win almost every single game to make the playoffs.
To finish 10th and make the play-in, they need to win 14 of 23 for a 41–41 record. To finish 8th, they need to win 16 of 23 for a 43–39 record. To finish 6th and make the playoffs, they need to win 18 of 23 for a 45–37 record.
After watching their new lineups, the Lakers’ long-shot path to the playoffs suddenly looks more like a slam dunk. Barring injury, the Lakers are about to become the nightmare team that nobody wants to face in the playoffs.
The Lakers were a doomed team last week, their front office questioning whether to even make a move to save the season. That now appears to have been all posturing as Rob Pelinka and the Lakers won the trade deadline.
Ham’s new lineups now have the Lakers looking at bigger targets than just making the play-in tourney or the playoffs. The Lakers believe their new lineups and rotation have them potentially poised for a championship run.
Rob Pelinka Finally Shows His Royal Flush
Sometimes, the best opportunities to redefine who you are, reestablish an identity, or create a new vision for the future happen after a team has made a horrendous mistake that threatens the viability of the franchise.
That’s exactly what happened with the Los Angeles Lakers this season. After struggling to figure out how to get out of the hole in which the Westbrook trade had left them, Rob Pelinka found a vision to embrace.
Westbrook caused the Lakers to rethink everything. Three superstars vs. two superstars? Cap space vs. tradable contracts? Win now vs. build for the future? The value of draft picks. How to make a third superstar work?
As the trade deadline approached, Pelinka knew the Lakers needed more than tweaks not only to give the team a shot at making the playoffs and winning #18 but also to position them to be a major player this summer.
Pelinka knew the Lakers needed an extreme makeover and set a goal to swap six players, all but one on expiring contracts, and one protected first round pick for three new starters and three new primary backups.
But before Pelinka could execute his bold trade deadline plan to rebuild the Lakers, Kyrie Irving turned the NBA world on its head by demanding a trade from the Nets with the L.A. Lakers as his preferred destination.
This was the ultimate test for Pelinka. Could a last minute trade for a third superstar once again derail Lakers’ plans to build a deep, diverse roster? This time Rob resisted the Nets’ crazy demands and returned back to plan.
The trades Pelinka had lined up had already produced Hachimura, Russell, Beasley, and Vanderbilt when Rob reportedly gave up trying to trade Beverley and Walker for Bogdanovic and instead traded for Mo Bamba.
Rob solved the Lakers’ need for size, shooting, and defense with six bigger, younger, better players, including two new starting guards and one starting defensive wing plus a backup shooting guard, forward, and rim protector.
By keeping one of the picks, trading for younger players with more upside, and negotiating strong top-4 protection on the pick that traded to Utah, Pelinka was able to protect and actually enhance the Lakers’ future.
Should the Lakers make the playoffs and be fortunate enough to win their 18th NBA Championship, those observers, including myself, who thought the Lakers were the biggest trade deadline winner will be vindicated.
Bottom line, while trying to find a way out of the Westbrook disaster, Rob Pelinka’s ended up finding an innovative vision he could embrace for a new and different Lakers’ team that’s built to win both today and tomorrow.
Darvin Ham Embraces New Look Lakers Lineups
After being mercilessly trolled for his earlier starting lineups and rotations, Darvin Ham is now receiving universal praise for the new look Lakers’ lineups that he previewed against the Pelican last Wednesday night.
There’s been no behind-the-scenes reporting on how and why Darvin Ham suddenly changed his mind two days after declaring Dennis Schröder and D’Angelo Russell would be his starting backcourt for the foreseeable future.
Whether it was his own decision or whether he was following counsel from Rob Pelinka or others, Ham clearly made the right decision and the Lakers’ performance Wednesday night clearly validated his new look lineups.
The decision by Rob Pelinka and the front office to completely rebuild the Lakers’ starting lineup and rotation with just 23 games left was a complete surprise considering the franchise’s inaction the past two trade deadlines.
It was also a strong vote of confidence in rookie head coach Darvin Ham, who had been specifically included in the trade deadline strategy meetings and was closely involved as the Lakers’ final trade deadline plans evolved.
While I’ve been a strong Darvin Ham supporter, I’ve also been highly critical of his lineups, rotations, and substitutions. What drives me crazy about Darvin is he won’t set rules to help manage his lineups and rotations.
The Lakers have two superstars, two point guards, two rim protectors. Every single Lakers lineup that sets foot on the court should have one superstar, one point guard, and one rim protector as part of its fivesome.
There’s no question some of those earlier lineups were probably the best Ham could do with what Pelinka had given him. Fortunately, the new look roster is deeper, bigger, and more diverse than Darvin’s earlier roster.
The key will be can the new look Lakers lineups defend. Based on last Wednesday’s preview, the signs are promising. The Lakers starting lineup has two defenders who can defend all five positions at all three levels.
The Lakers took a huge risk in hiring a rookie head coach like Darvin Ham but he’s held up well in face of serious challenges in getting Westbrook to accept coming off the bench and dealing with James’ and Davis’ injuries.
Now Darvin will get a chance to coach with a roster that’s deep and diverse and a perfect fit for LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And with his new look lineups, Ham’s ready to go with the right players in the right positions.
With 23 games left in the season, this Laker are now firmly in the hands of rookie head coach Darvin Ham, who’s finally going to have a chance to coach the quality of team we expected to when he was hired by the Lakers.
Really this last week or so was a tale of two realities: one with LeBron and the other without. Few players warp a basketball court, or a sport even, like a healthy and engaged LeBron James. The two key words in all of that are “healthy“ and “engaged”. There is no line up entered only around Davis that can win consistently. We saw that for the last couple weeks after LeBron broke the scoring record. I also have to wonder if Ham deployed Vanderbilt because of his track record of excellent defense on Brandon Ingram and added Beasley into the starting five because those three played together for a couple seasons. We’ll see post break, I think that line up has potential that could be switched up a little depending on matchups (Walker, Reaves or Dennis over Malik, for example) and with no camp and not much practice it won’t be too surprising to see Ham try some combos down the stretch. In all honesty, given how we need to win as many of these games as we can, it makes sense to treat them like playoff games. Got a guy who lights some team or other? Start him and make sure you run something for him in the sweet spot. Someone locks up a crucial matchup on D for whatever reason? Make him the primary defender and make sure he’s ready in the same minutes slot.
The only thing that the Lakers absolutely have to avoid is complacency. They need to do what they can to reduce LeBron’s workload, and your ideas about staggering minutes should have been gospel since the summer and why it hasn’t been is highly questionable, and maximize his availability. Same goes for AD who needs to use what health he has to dominate the paint on both ends.
We’ll see how some of the new guys adjust to this pressure cooker, we’ll see how the guys here from before adjust to new roles. The one thing I know is the spacing won’t matter if we give up points like they’re junk mail coupons. That has been the issue, yes some of that can be stymied by running a smarter offense, but most of it comes from simple effort on defense. We need to rr-dedicate ourselves to hard close outs and live with midrange twos, can’t sieve points in the paint, either. If Mi can defend without fouling on a per minute basis I think he can help but that’s not really his MO to date. Like many players before him and yet to come, physical tools are wonderful but limited by what you are actually able to accomplish. We had high hopes for the long-limbed THT and we saw how chasing that dream cost us a truly impactful rotation and playoff player.
Good stuff, Jamie. Great win to keep us enthralled for another week. What a great starting lineup and rotation. Frankly, going to be hard for Darvin to screw up the rotations if he sticks to these lineups.
I’m sure we will see some growing pains as the team learns how each other plays but the upgrade in quality of suddenly having a bunch of guys who make more than the minimum is amazing. I love the starting lineup and the first line of reserves. Ham can even play the second unit as one since it covers all the basics.
The big difference will be defense and adding Vando and Bamba will turn out to be huge defensive moves. Both already have shown they totally change the Lakers defensive dynamic and give AD needed support. This could be the best trade deadline set of deals I’ve ever seen.
The result is what happens when a team’s front office has made such a terrible move that they’re willing to consider everything. That they actually initiated an extreme makeover tells you how distressed they were over the situation. That they made the smart move to rebuild a team with youth and athleticism to surround their older superstars was a difference maker. With a little more luck, we just might have another parade.
I just rewatched Wednesday night’s game again to see if I still felt as strongly after a second viewing that the Lakers seriously have a potential championship team if they can continue to play like they did against the Pelicans. This team is going to be great.
I also believe they will make the top-6 teams by the end of the season by winning 16 or 17 out of the remaining 23 games (LeBron’s old number, by the way) to finish 43-39 or 44-38. If everybody can stay healthy, that should be a slam dunk, which is a huge upgrade from missing the playoffs before the trades.
When I look at what Rob accomplished at the trade deadline – swapping Westbrook, Beverley, Nunn, Bryant, Jones, Toscano-Anderson, and a lightly protected first round pick for D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura, Mo Bamba, and Davon Reed, it’s an amazing extreme makeover.
I seriously believe this team has a legitimate chance to win the Lakers 18th NBA championship this season. Rob did a great job. Now it’s Darvin’s turn to get this team humming so they enter the playoffs directly peaking at the right time to win #18.
I thought the team player pretty good “D.”
PS-Why did LBJ not attend “Practice” today?
He had a date with Savannah.
2nd best defensive rating in league at 100.0 for their last game. Having two elite defenders in the starting lineup like Davis and Vando makes a huge difference. Bamba is also going to be huge protecting the rim for second unit. This team will be top-10 in both offense and defense, which is what you need to win a championship.
I didn’t get to rewatch the game since I got rid of my league pass. But I have to admit I read this pobrably a 1000 times. That’s how much I enjoyed reading this post. Good job, Tom. I have been watching the Lakers on an online site for free. Not that am cheap like Jeanne Buss. Lol!!!
https://twitter.com/LakerTom/status/1627043773921517573
https://twitter.com/LakerTom/status/1627045500519325696
https://twitter.com/LakerTom/status/1627046961328300032
Lotta superlatives there for having one decent win.
True but for the first time since the bubble, I think we we have the right players in the right positions. There will be setbacks and learning lessons and may not be enough time, but the chance is there and we just might be good enough to pull it off if LeBron and AD can remain healthy.
Certainly a better shot than before the trades. Probably still too late. Just imagine if they’d have simply told Westbrook to stay home and would’ve won at least 5 more games to date. Could’ve made all the difference.