Lakers News: Darvin Ham Alludes To Possible Change Among Starting 5 Tonight

Is the man they call "Hillbilly Kobe" about to get promoted?

It's no secret that your Los Angeles Lakers have been getting out to rough starts in some of their recent contests before getting right by the ends of (most) of their first quarters (excluding that atrocious 31-19 opening frame against the Houston Rockets last week).

LA head coach Darvin Ham was questioned point-blank by Jovan Buha of The Athletic about LA's slow starts to games. 

Ham noted that he "has something up [his] sleeve" ahead of this evening's game against the Phoenix Suns.

Does this mean Ham is going to tweak his first five? Swapping out current starting small forward Troy Brown Jr. for bench wing Austin Reaves would be the obvious play. Reaves is a better playmaker and more willing shooter than TBJ, though at 6'6" with a 6'11" wingspan, the bigger Brown is a more versatile defender than Reaves, who stands 6'5" with a 6'6" wingspan.

Across his last eight games, Reaves is averaging 19.1 points on .570/.357/.803 shooting splits for LA, along with 5.5 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 0.6 steals a night!

Ham could also opt to insert 6'8" combo forward Rui Hachimura into his starting lineup, either in for Brown at small forward or for defense-first starting power forward Jarred Vanderbilt. In his last eight games with LA, Hachimura is averaging 10.3 points on .557/.474/1.000 shooting splits and 2.9 rebounds.

Hachimura would make more sense going in for Brown, as Vanderbilt's defensive versatility has proven pretty essential to this new-look post-trade deadline LA club.

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