Following Tuesday’s NBA Cup victory with the Bucks, Darvin Ham spoke very openly about being fired by the Lakers, holding little back.
Darvin Ham has become a bit of meme when it comes to the NBA Cup.
Following the Bucks’ triumph over the Thunder, Ham moved to 12-0 in the brief, two-year history of the NBA Cup between his time as head coach of the Lakers and assistant coach in Milwaukee.
After the game, though, Ham was feeling pretty feisty. While he spoke during the preseason about his time with the Lakers and gave a very buttoned-up, professional statement, he spoke much more freely while talking to Marc Spears of Andscape about his firing.
“To do as well as I did, I swear to God, anywhere else I’m probably looking at an extension with what I did,” Ham said. “I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking actual facts. They go from not making it to the playoffs to the final four in the NBA, the conference finals. And then you win the in-season tournament, navigate through all the injuries and win both of your play-in games to get to the playoffs.
“People always talk about us losing to Denver, but they never talk about how we got to Denver. We beat a kick-ass young squad in Memphis and we beat Golden State.”
On paper, Ham does have a decent argument. He did help the Lakers get back to the playoffs, doing so even despite an incredibly flawed roster to begin his first year in charge and a 2-10 start to the season. Objectively, that was impressive.
Then, in his second season, he won the NBA Cup and improved the team’s record despite being in a tougher Western Conference. All of that, on paper, is true.
But there is context that exists outside of a vacuum or on paper, and that is where things went awry for Ham.
What became very clear both in the reporting in the immediate aftermath and just the team’s vibe this season is that Ham had lost the locker room. It seems to have either started or escalated with the benching of Austin Reaves and D’Angelo Russell after the NBA Cup last year and the train never got back on the tracks.
It was perhaps most clear to the public in the playoffs last year when Ham and Anthony Davis had a public back-and-forth about whether they knew what they were doing on the court. No matter where you stood on the matter, playing it out in the media was the wrong call and something the Lakers reportedly felt was a bad decision, too.
Ham tried to continue to offer a defense to some of those claims, too, though there were plenty of holes in his argument.
“I’m not a mudslinger and I’m not going to wait until I’m 51 to become one,” Ham said. “You feel like you did enough to sustain in one spot. I felt like I did that. I get it. The franchise I’m working for, the expectations can be unrealistic at certain points in time. To be 33-49 when I was hired, with an unbalanced roster, turn that around, make it to the Western Conference finals. The very next year we were a plus-10 in wins, going from 33-49 to 43-39. And guys got paid on my watch. It went from a lot of unknown scenarios to I think we have a little bit of a core. And then we got hit with the injury bug like crazy last [season]. We might have been Top 5 in games lost to injury.
“It’s being reported like I’m just throwing some lineups up against the wall to see what sticks. No man, we were really navigating a lot from guys being hurt to having the oldest player in the league [James] to navigating A.D.’s injury history. It was a lot.
“Some of the s— that was coming out? Wow, bro I don’t know X’s and O’s? I was winging it. Dude, that was the most disappointing stuff, how mean and so much stuff people are saying online. The best thing I could do was block out the outside noise,” Ham said.
“I’m not a mudslinger, but here’s some mud flying through the air”
Injuries definitely had a big impact on the team in his second year, no matter how much LeBron James and AD played. But, that’s about all the credit Ham gets here.
After missing a month in Dec. 2022 through Jan. 2023, Davis played 107 of 116 possible games. The same goes for LeBron, who played 79 of the final 90 regular games Darvin coached. Those guys were just simply available and there’s no argument you can make about not having them.
Lastly, it’s probably not best to argue that you were fine with X’s and O’s after Lakers fans are seeing what JJ Redick is doing this season.
Ultimately, there can’t be much of an argument against firing Ham, and I say that as someone who was banging the drum for keeping him longer than most.
It’s best for all parties involved that he’s coaching in Milwaukee this season where he and Doc Rivers surely will find plenty of success and not choke in the playoffs.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.