The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their worst loss of the young season thus far with a 120-101 blowout loss at the hands of the Orlando Magic. The Lakers were never truly within striking distance, trailing by 14 after the first quarter and losing by 21 heading into the fourth. And yet, head coach Darvin Ham did not wave the white flag until the the 4:04 mark of the fourth quarter.
At that point, the Lakers were down 16, meaning they had only knocked five points off of the Magic lead in eight minutes. Normally, a team like the Lakers with some older players and in postseason contention, would call it a night far earlier than what Ham did on Saturday.
But the Lakers head coach had a reason for the decision, saying that based on where the Lakers are in their season, there’s a benefit to keeping the starters playing in what is likely a lost game, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“There’s lessons that can be learned when it’s a self-inflicted wound. Again, I stick with those two areas. Giving up offensive rebounds and turnovers, those are self-inflicted wounds. Those are things you can actually control. You’re obviously gonna give up maybe a couple, three or four, offensive rebounds throughout the course of an NBA game just because the ball bounces funny sometimes and yeah, you may have eight, nine, 10 turnovers just because you’re making a competitive play and just doesn’t quite work out. But to have them at that magnitude with the production the Magic were able to get from those two areas, it’s inexcusable. But again, it’s game six and the last thing we wanted to do was just throw in the towel too soon. I had timeouts to play with so I looked at Bron and we were talking about just trying to cut into the lead as big as possible and then we tried to manage it there. We get a stop, the ball bounces funny, they get it back and score three or get an and-one or get fouled, a shooting foul or whatever. In turn, we struggled a little bit, we had some good looks that didn’t go down for us as well. But nah, I wasn’t gonna pull the plug that quickly.”
Ham’s reasoning for leaving the starters in certainly has some logic to it. So early in the season, it makes sense to at least try and mount a comeback while building some familiarity on the floor together.
However, it did lead to James playing 35 minutes, yet another game in which L.A. has gone past their 28-30-minute benchmark they set for James on Opening Night. But Ham and James are going to continue to communicate about his minutes and health, and clearly everyone agreed to continue playing on Saturday night despite the losing effort.
Ham: Lakers took step backwards with defensive rebounding
The Lakers struggled to clear the defensive glass all season long and the Magic took complete advantage of that even while missing starting center Wendell Carter Jr. The team gave up 19 offensive rebounds, leading to 36 second chance points.
It is a known issue for the Lakers and after the loss, Ham called the team’s performance on the glass a step back.
“It’s just their effort, their energy. They’re down bodies, we’re down bodies, and so the game basically comes down to approach, mental approach… They outworked us and I think because of that energy and effort, they saw the ball go in. They did a great job of just playing fast continuously, covering for one another defensively and just pounding us on the glass. It’s a huge, huge step backwards for us in terms of our defensive rebounding.”
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