Lakers: Darvin Ham Explains Decision To Give Up Early In Fourth Against Clippers
Last night, your Los Angeles Lakers fell into quite the halftime hole against their fellow Crypto.com Arena tenants, the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clips led the Lake Show at the break by a whopping 23-point margin, 77-54. Though the Lakers had rallied all the way back from a 25-point deficit on Sunday against the Portland Trail Blazers, it proved too tall a task on Tuesday.
That's not to say that the Purple and Gold didn't have its chances. Spurred mostly by the spectacular efforts of LeBron James, the Lakers at one point narrowed the Clips' advantage to just 10 points in the fourth quarter, before allowing Kawhi and co. to go on an 8-0 run. At that point, with five minutes still remaining in regulation, head coach Darvin Ham opted to surrender, pulling his key rotation players and bring in some deep-bench subs. It was notably early to give up. The Lakers would go on to lose, 133-115.
After the game, Ham explained his thinking to gathered reporters.
"We probably had a couple of breakdowns, but for the most part I kept telling my team not to be discouraged, because I felt like we were getting some great contests," Ham said. "We were forcing them into really tough shots, and they were just making them. So you tip your hat to them. Hell of a first half by them shooting the ball and... their overall play. Just proud of our guys coming out and giving us a huge effort, bringing it in close but against a great team like that, you gotta play damn near perfect to overcome that [23-point halftime] deficit."
"The NBA level is based on runs. Every team is going to make them. They made theirs, we made ours, and then they started going into another one. And with another game to play tonight, a quick turnaround, I didn't want to run our guys in the ground, as much as we can. The beautiful thing about this league is you get to do it all over again so you don't have time to feel sorry for yourself. The Clippers are a hell of a ball club... We have business to do tomorrow, have to fill our cups back up, and get ready to go to battle against a young, aggressive, athletic, energetic San Antonio ball club."
Tonight's bout against the aforementioned San Antonio Spurs kicks off at 7:30 p.m. PT.
