Lakers News: Darvin Ham Coaching For His Job In Game 5?

Will he last longer than the Lakers do in these playoffs?

Apr 27, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; Los Angeles Lakers head coach Darvin Ham chats with team president Rob Pelinka. / Jason Parkhurst-USA TODAY Sports

After falling to a (probably) insurmountable 0-3 first round playoff series deficit against the Denver Nuggets to start the postseason, the Los Angeles Lakers have 151 prior series' worth of evidence suggesting that it's only a matter of time before they're given the boot. After leading by double digits in all three prior losses, LA managed to stave off total embarrassment on Saturday night by actually, you know, maintaining a lead through till the end of the game.

Still, the Lakers trail the reigning champion Nuggets in the series 3-1, meaning they'll have to win out to survive the series and advance to the next round of the Western Conference playoffs. Given that the series is headed to Ball Arena in Denver on Monday, it's anyone's guess as to whether Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and the rest of their incredible roster is willing to let this farce of a Lakers "comeback" last much longer.

Accordingly, it appears that second-year Los Angeles head coach Darvin Ham's future with the franchise is on the line, after some dubious substitutions and applications of timeouts appeared to cost the club a win or two from among those first three come-from-ahead losses.

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Ham may not survive the series if the Lakers drop Game 5:

“If you are a head coach of the Lakers and you get swept in the first round of the playoffs, or you lose in five, you’ve got job issues. You’ve got job security issues,” Wojnarowski noted. “And Darvin Ham will have that.”

Ham has coached the Lakers to a 90-74 overall regular season record during his two years with the program. He started off his run in 2022-23 with an ill-fitting roster that would have challenged anyone, but after some savvy moves from team president Rob Pelinka equipped All-Stars Anthony Davis and LeBron James with some better supporting characters as that year's trade deadline approached, the Lakers went on a nice run to end the year, finishing as the No. 7 seed with a 43-39 record and making a run all the way to the Western Conference Finals... where they were promptly swept by the Nuggets.

This year, the team seemed poised to improve on its regular season success, given that it was starting out with most of the core group from that WCF run. And while Los Angeles did win four more games, the rest of the West also got better. The Lakers finished with the eighth-best record in the conference, but won their play-in tournament game against the 49-win New Orleans Pelicans to become the No. 7 seed once again. Unfortunately, that meant Los Angeles had a first round date with the Nuggets, easily the favorites to once again make the Finals. The Lakers might have had a punchers' chance against pretty much anyone else in the West, but Denver is just operating at a more advanced tier.

All this is to say, Los Angeles was pretty much doomed to win this series from the jump. Yes, some of these individual losses may not have needed to happen, but eventually, LA was going to fall. Is canning Ham the solution? Or is rethinking the entire roster really the cure for what ails the Lakers?

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