Can Darvin Ham Save The Los Angeles Lakers?

With a star-laden roster, including two former league MVPs in LeBron James and Russell Westbrook and perennial All-Star Anthony Davis, the Los Angeles Lakers entered last season hoping to compete for a championship.

The roster construction was flawed, though. Westbrook’s ball dominance and lack of perimeter shooting and defense made him a difficult fit next to James. Davis and James both missed significant game action due to injury, particularly Davis.

The team traded two of its best perimeter defenders, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma, in the Westbrook trade, and replaced them with much lesser caliber defenders. They also lost assistant coach Jason Kidd to Dallas, and Kidd was widely credited with managing what had been a solid Lakers defense in previous seasons.

Head coach Frank Vogel wasn’t able to manage the team’s slippage on defense, and he also couldn’t ever come up with any offensive creativity to maximize the talents of any of the three stars. He was fired after the season as the Lakers bottomed out this year, finishing 11th in the Western conference standings.

Vogel coached the Lakers for three seasons but never getting near the success of his first season when the team won an NBA championship. Vogel’s inability to make adjustments to the personnel he had was a frequent source of frustration and criticism for the Lakers, even getting shade from rookie Austin Reaves after he was fired.

Now, the team has a new coach, former Milwaukee Bucks assistant Darvin Ham, who already seemingly has the most important endorsement from James. Ham was a solid NBA player for several seasons and has been a successful assistant coach, so the Lakers hope that recent playing experience will help him connect with the roster.

The biggest key to success for Ham and the team will be simple health – if Davis and James are healthy and available throughout the season, Los Angeles should be much improved. But beyond that, here are three things Ham must do to have success in his first season.

Maximize Davis: It’s easy to forget due to his injury history, but a healthy Davis is still in his prime and is one of the best offensive and defensive players in the league. Assuming the offseason gives him the recovery needed from his injuries, there are several things Ham can do to maximize his effectiveness.

Adding depth to the frontcourt is the responsibility of the front office, but if Ham’s rotation has physical, strong defenders who can stay on the court (last year’s center Dwight Howard often got into foul trouble and his lack of shooting makes him unplayable in certain situations) and take pressure off of Davis to always defend the opposing team’s best big man, that can preserve his energy for offense. Davis is also a great shot blocker, so allowing him to protect the rim and contest shots by not always having the toughest defensive responsibility could improve the Lakers overall defense and help account for the fact that the team was one of the worst at defending the perimeter last season.

Offensively, the Lakers can benefit by playing smaller lineups with Davis at center. Davis has been resistant to playing center in the past, but there are great benefits to him doing it situationally on offense. There are few, if any, centers in the league who can defend his face-up game. Being guarded by bigger, slower players would give him a chance at several easy baskets per game.

Find the right role for Westbrook: The Lakers would undoubtedly like to move on from Westbrook, but with the trade market for him all but non-existent unless the Lakers want to attach assets to his contract, it serves them well to at least try and make things work under a new coach first.

Westbrook is ball-dominant, doesn’t have three-point range, and doesn’t defend well. Those things all hurt the Lakers with him in a major role last season, and they were also skills that didn’t mesh well with James. That doesn’t mean Westbrook is useless, though. He still gets to the rim, creates shots for teammates, and can finish. He’s also a good rebounder.

One solution? Making Westbrook comfortable with a sixth man role. That would give him more time on the court as the primary playmaker while James rests, allow him to attack matchups on the second unit, and even allow Ham to get very creative with lineups. Westbrook doesn’t shoot well and rebounds a ton, why not make him a small ball center in some lineups?

Westbrook buying in is of course the biggest hurdle, but if he’s amenable to coming off of the bench he could quickly become a unique instant offense force among NBA reserves.

Bring back the defense: Ham carved out a career as a good role player, particularly as a defender. He even played a key reserve role on the 2004 champion Detroit Pistons, one of the greatest defensive teams of the last two decades statistically.

He’s not going to morph the Lakers into elite defenders overnight. He has two big obstacles, and Westbrook is a poor defender and James is only occasionally engaged on the defensive end of the court. But if the roster can get restocked with hard-nosed role players on the perimeter, that should be just the raw material Ham needs to mold them into a stingier group. Simply improving the defensive effort will help. If Davis and James are healthy, the Lakers, who are currently +2000 in NBA Finals Futures for next season, only need an average defense to get back into playoff contention.