Lakers News: Darvin Ham Puts Positive Spin On Bummer Of A Boston Defeat

L.A.'s head coach reflects on a "hard-fought" battle.

Your Los Angeles Lakers didn't get the result they wanted Tuesday night against the Boston Celtics, losing in overtime 122-118 after putting forth an impressive comeback attempt in the game's second half.

"It sucks, man. I'm so disappointed that we didn't close that out. But we'll get better from it." Darvin Ham on tonight's loss. pic.twitter.com/hTgwK4Lzzc

— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) December 14, 2022

"I'm disappointed that we lost," Ham reflected. "I'm proud of my guys, they competed all the way to the end and we gave ourselves a chance to win the game, we just came up a little bit short."

"I have to go back and look at the film" Ham noted when asked about why the team's offense dried up in the overtime frame, after the team's energetic scoring got it back into the contest in the third quarter. "It was just different situations where we're trying to force-read the ball to our main guys and [Celtics defenders] collapsed, they crowd 'em, ball gets sprayed around, and... it's a make or miss league... Those are good looks," Ham said. 

"The biggest thing is, once we go back and look at the film, is to see if we can get a second or third action quicker," Ham noted. "It's tough. It's a hard-fought game, guys are fatigued... It's why it's hard, it's why you gotta be thankful when you get a W in the league. It's a tough league, especially against a team like that, you make one false move they gotta make you pay. It's just a matter of getting to things quicker."

One issue may have been the big minutes played by the Lakers' veteran stars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, who both were on the hardwood for 42+ minutes of the 53-minute contest.

Ham noted that, though James and Davis played every single second of the game's fourth quarter and overtime frames without a break, he tried to be tactical in using timeouts to manufacture rest.

"I mean just strategically trying to see how we can wisely use our time outs and give them breaks that way. It's hard because it's two-fold... you have guys that are in a good rhythm together, so you don't want to disrupt that. On the flip side of that you don't want to put a player at risk because they've been sitting down or they're on the bench for so long and then you bring them out there and... the intensity and the speed of the game is at such a level where it's very easy to get hurt in a situation like that."

"It sucks, man," Ham said of the defeat. "I'm so disappointed that we didn't close that out." Then he offered a message of hope for how the team will move forward. "But we'll get better from it."