Lakers: Darvin Ham Defends Indefensible 3-Point Shooting Defense In Portland
On Monday night, your Los Angeles Lakers, down starter and best player LeBron James and key reserve Mo Bamba, fell in a 127-115 blowout to the Portland Trail Blazers, themselves down two starters in Jerami Grant and Jusuf Nurkic, plus a few incidental backups. It was a critical defeat down the home stretch of the season, as the 26-32 Lakers scramble to reach the West's top 10 (they're currently the 13th seed) to qualify for the year-end play-in tournament and after that, hopefully, the playoffs.
Probably the craziest disparity came in three-point shooting. Portland sank 17 (!) triples in the first half (eight from All-Star point guard Damian Lillard) and six in the second, for a total of 23 allowed threes by a porous Lakers defense.
Lakers head coach Darvin Ham defended (ahem) his team's defense in postgame remarks to the press. Rob Perez of Underdog Fantasy unpacked the team's actual three-point defense in the game's first half, shot by shot. The results were somewhat brutal, as you'll see below.
“We checked the analytical data at halftime," Ham argued. "And, according to that data, our defensive shot quality we would have been #1 in the league.”
What the heck was Ham reading? What kind of data tells Rui Hachimura that standing yards away from his cover is "good defense?" What a night for your Lakers.
LA finished 12-for-37 from deep (32.4%). Let's hope things change for the better tonight against the New Orleans Pelicans.
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