Darvin Ham is proving that Lakers fans owe an apology to Frank Vogel
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers can feel the season slipping through their fingers as the calendar is about to turn to the new year. The team has not been able to respond to an Anthony Davis injury, losing four games in a row without AD.
Los Angeles is now 13-20 on the season and is in 13th place in the Western Conference. Not only is the record bad but the losses have been extremely ugly this season. The Christmas loss to the Dallas Mavericks saw the Lakers let up 51 points in the third quarter with Darvin Ham employing some questionable strategies.
The most egregious was a five-guard lineup in which Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, Dennis Schroder, Austin Reaves and Lonnie Walker IV were all on the court together. You do not need to know basketball to know that a five-guard lineup probably is not going to work, especially with those guards.
Ham’s first season as Lakers head coach has been an interesting one. While he still has more time to prove himself and shouldn’t be on the hot seat this early in his coaching tenure, it should make Lakers fans realize a reality that I have been preaching here at Lake Show Life for over a year now. Last season was not Frank Vogel’s fault.
Frank Vogel deserves an apology from Los Angeles Lakers fans.
This is not to say that Frank Vogel was a perfect head coach. He obviously made mistakes and absolving him of all blame for last season would be irresponsible. That being said, he became the fall guy last season for something that really was out of his control.
Vogel was handed a roster that was old, made no sense and had a “star” in Russell Westbrook on it that he was forced to manage. It was a lot easier to move Westbrook to the bench this season after the disaster that was last season. It was not as easy a year ago.
Plus, as crazy as it sounds, last year’s team was more competitive than this team up until its Anthony Davis injury. AD got injured right around the same point of the season and that is when last year’s Lakers started to fall off.
Yet still, last year’s team had a 16-18 record after Christmas and at one point were 16-13. This year’s team has never even been above .500. If last year started to fall of the rails so quickly, imagine how poorly this year will go.
Some Lakers fans are trying to play revisionist history and say that last year’s roster was far better than this year’s. Outside of Malik Monk, that simply is not true. There is a reason why nearly all of last year’s roster is no longer playing in the NBA. Westbrook and Reaves have been far better this year than last year as well.
The front office simply overreacted and fired their title-winning head coach less than two calendar years after he brought them a championship because of a problem that was their doing, not his.
Ham struggling even worse with a better group of guys showcases that the problem was never the head coach, it was the front office. But while they cycle through head coaches to divert the blame, Rob Pelinka will keep getting contract extensions.
What a fun time to be a Lakers fan.