The first welcoming tweet Friday probably was the tipoff.
So damn EXCITED!!!!!!!! Congrats and welcome Coach DHam!!
#LakeShow
— LeBron James (@KingJames) May 28, 2022
“So damn EXCITED!!!!!!!! Congrats and welcome Coach DHam!! #LakeShow,” wrote LeBron James, adding five clapping hands and two hearts, one purple and one gold.
If the superstar isn’t just excited but eight exclamation points excited, that’s an awfully good start to Darvin Ham’s first NBA head coaching job.
Ham, whose hiring and four-year contract were first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Friday, technically isn’t starting at the top, since the 2021-22 Lakers were 33-49 and missed the play-in round to create the coaching opening in the first place.
But in another sense he is. For all of the perceived flaws of the Lakers’ organization, it remains one of the prestige franchises, and thus one of the prestige jobs, in not only the NBA but in all of sports.
It comes with the attendant pressure. It’s a team with a national profile and a national fan base, a legacy team on the same level as the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Yankees. Even when they’re lousy people care, not only nationwide but worldwide. A survey of Google searches by sidelines.io a couple of weeks ago revealed that the Lakers were the most searched team in 25 of the 50 states, coast to coast plus Alaska and Hawaii. The next best? The Celtics with six, all in the New England states.
Hardly scientific, true. But the point is that where there’s interest, there’s scrutiny, most specifically in L.A. Good thing, then, that Ham is reportedly getting that four-year contract. It provides some runway that he’ll need, because the roster construction problems that bedeviled the Lakers last season haven’t disappeared.
Notably, as of 9:30 Friday night there wasn’t yet a welcoming tweet from @russwest44, Russell Westbrook’s blue-checkmarked Twitter page. Westbrook is expected to pick up his $47.1 million player option for 2022-23 by the June 29 deadline, at which point the Lakers will have to determine if their marquee acquisition of last summer fits into this summer’s vision.
Issues remain. The players who were complementary pieces to a championship team in 2000 had scattered by last season, with people like Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Markieff Morris and Kyle Kuzma replaced by veterans who in several cases didn’t have as much left in them as they thought they had. The Lakers couldn’t stay healthy, they didn’t mesh when they were healthy, and Frank Vogel took the fall.
The bottom line is that when prestige jobs like this come open, it’s because somebody failed. (Hint: It’s not always the previous coach.)
That said, there is reason to believe in this move.
Ham played eight seasons in the NBA, and in fact, the @ESPNNBA account tweeted out a picture of Ham guarding James during a game in 2004.
This pic of Darvin Ham guarding LeBron in 2004
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) May 28, 2022
He has experience in the Lakers’ organization, as an assistant in 2011-12 and ’12-13 under Mike Brown and Mike D’Antoni in a player development role.
He has a breadth of experience, as a player not only in the NBA but in the G-League and overseas, and as a G-League head coach and assistant in addition to his NBA bench experience. And he has two rings, one as a player for Detroit in 2004 (at the Lakers’ expense), and one with the Bucks last season, so he understands that process.
He’s a branch of a pretty solid coaching tree. Mike Budenholzer earned his stripes under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, and as a head coach in Atlanta and Milwaukee. Quin Snyder, Kenny Atkinson and Taylor Jenkins, and now Ham, have been hired off his staff.
Ham has been given responsibility. During a June 2020 podcast with his former coach in Milwaukee, George Karl, Ham said: “Coach Bud has allowed me to have a voice, he’s allowed me to grow, he’s allowed me responsibility. And we do everything. I do player development, I do gameplans, I scout for some of the biggest teams I have to prepare our team for. So it’s a situation that’s favorable, and he’s allowed me to be me.”
And by all accounts he has shown the ability to speak truth to power, in NBA terms, getting his points across to stars and veterans but doing it in a way that doesn’t puncture a player’s ego. He’s worked with Kobe Bryant, he’s worked with Giannis Antetokounmpo, and I’d imagine he’d mesh just fine with James and Anthony Davis.
Westbrook? He could probably make that work, too, but we’ll see.
Another guy who has demonstrated the ability to tell superstars uncomfortable truths? Tyronn Lue, now the Clippers head coach (and, three seasons ago, the guy who seemingly had the inside track to replace Luke Walton as Lakers coach before negotiations broke down). It is worth noting that Lue won a championship as a first-year head coach, with James in 2016 in Cleveland after he took over at midseason. More recently, first-year head coach Nick Nurse won a title in Toronto in 2019, not that there’s any pressure or anything.
Ham obviously nailed the interview Thursday, since the Lakers offered him a contract Friday. Now comes the hard part.
But this just might work.
jalexander@scng.com
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