Lakers News: Players Advocated For LA To Fire Darvin Ham This Season?

This is surprising to absolutely no one.

Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Lakers' mediocre 2023-24 regular season run has just two games remaining, with the team now being locked into play-in territory following the Phoenix Suns' win against the depleted LA Clippers on Wednesday night.

While LA looked fantastic through different stretches of the season, a couple blemished runs in early winter and across the past couple of games made devastating impacts on their season.

With the Denver Nuggets all but clinching the No. 1 seed, the Lakers, in a best-case scenario, appear on a crash course to play the reigning champions in the first round, a series in which, justifiably, nobody will give LA a fighting chance.

The team's losing stretches of games that led to this point could be attributed directly to head coach Darvin Ham, who has been treating the team like a lab experiment the entire season. Odd lineups involving no guards, too many guards, no bigs, too many bigs, and more have sparked LA's sputtering, all but locking them into a first-round exit.

Cornerstone pieces of the team like Austin Reaves, D'Angelo Russell, and Rui Hachimura all found themselves coming off the bench for far too many games, and even in games where they've started, their minutes have been improperly staggered with one another, setting none of them up for success.

Per HoopsWire's Ashish Mathur, an inside source has indicated that Lakers players wanted assistant coach Phil Handy to replace Ham earlier in the season, reflecting turmoil within the locker room and the players being out on Ham.

It's impressive LA even possesses the 45-35 record that they do given the situation, and one can only imagine how much better they'd be if they had been properly coached from the get-go. So much of the (rightfully deserved) hype the Lakers received in the offseason had a lot to do with the team's continuity, which is something that traditionally makes it easier to build out rotations and optimal lineups.

Somehow, despite that clear advantage that the Lakers, contrary to a team like Phoenix or the Dallas Mavericks (both of whom have mildly outperformed LA by record despite having dealt with more injuries) had, Darvin Ham's costly errors have repeatedly caused this team to fall short of their potential.