Anthony Davis saves Darvin Ham from disaster as Lakers survive Warriors

The Los Angeles Lakers did exactly what they needed to do on Tuesday night in Game 1 of the Western Conference semi-finals against the Golden State Warriors. The Lake Show emerged victoriously, effectively stealing one game on the road against the Warriors.

As the team without home-court advantage, it is incredibly important for the Lakers to at least split the first two games in Golden State. If so, it becomes a best-of-five series with the Lakers having three of the remaining five games at home.

That is what Darvin Ham’s squad accomplished on Tuesday night in what will go down as a dogfight of a Game 1. It was not always pretty for the purple and gold, especially as far as the team’s head coach is concerned.

Lakers survive Warriors but Darvin Ham continues to struggle

Ham is a first-year head coach and it becomes very apparent in these playoff games that he is still learning on the job. While Ham seems to be a great motivator and gets his guys to buy in, there are some inconsistencies in his coaching that could cost the Lakers long-term.

His rotations have been questionable at times, which included Tuesday’s Game 1. Ham decided to play Anthony Davis every single minute of the second half of this game. Midway through the fourth quarter everyone at home could see that Davis was absolutely gassed and it was costing the team on both ends.

It looked like this game was going to be deja vu from Game 5 against Memphis in the previous series. Golden State went on a massive 14-0 run in the fourth quarter. Despite there being several momentum-changing plays, Ham decided to hold onto his two timeouts and let the lead trickle away.

Luckily, LeBron James was able to find D’Angelo Russell for a lay-up to keep the Warriors from taking the lead in the fourth quarter. Davis was then able to muster the last bit of energy he had left to block Stephen Curry on the other end, which led to a foul and LeBron making a free throw to extend the lead to three.

Davis is the main story of this game. After a lackluster (for his standards) offensive series against Memphis, Davis led all scorers in Game 1. In 44 minutes Davis scored 30 points on 11-19 shooting with 23 rebounds, five assists and four blocks.

Game 2 is on Thursday night. If the Lake Show can steal another game on the road then it is going to be a massive hole for the Warriors to get out of.