Lakers News: Darvin Ham Offers Interesting Takeaways From Dallas Loss

Your Los Angeles Lakers' nail-biting, 104-101 loss to the Dallas Mavericks has arguably been the most painful loss of the season.

From being down 16 at the half to outscoring Dallas by 17 in the 4th quarter and holding the lead with 1:16 to play, collapsing in the game's final minute stings that much more.

Here's what Darvin Ham had to say about the Wednesday night thriller:

Darvin Ham reflects on tonight's game: "We don't believe in moral victories around here... it's not just wins and losses, it's wisdom and lessons.. The way we buckled down in the fourth quarter, fought back, gave ourselves a chance. That's what you draw from that game." pic.twitter.com/AMDFIPeC2P
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) November 23, 2023

The highlight of Ham's commentary was the tweeted quote above, in which he says that the team doesn't "believe in moral victories," but also says that "the way [they] buckled down in the fourth quarter, fought back, gave [themselves] a chance.. that's what you draw from that game."

Ham's comments are fairly contradictory, as while it's definitely important to know that the team is capable of "buckling down and fighting back" when needed, in order to be title contenders, you need to be good for all 4 quarters.

The Lakers, however, unless they're playing a bad team, have a serious tendency to come out incredibly lethargic, falling behind by double digits early in games regularly.

This is an issue, as it makes their margin of error unnecessarily small and reduces their win probability dramatically.

Taking away that they were good at the end for the final 25% of the game is the definition of a moral victory, as rather than focusing on the actual outcome of the game, Ham suggests that the Lakers can take away the fact that they almost bailed themselves out from a completely unacceptable first half.

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