The Los Angeles Lakers saw their season come to an end in similar fashion as last year as they fought the Denver Nuggets had but came up short.
The Lakers were able to win a game this year, but their inability to close did them in as they held double-digit leads in all five contests but wound up losing four of them.
After last year’s Western Conference Finals, Nuggets head coach Michael Malone decided to poke fun at LeBron James and the Lakers numerous times, even long after the series was over.
This time around he took a different approach, however, paying his respects to the Lakers after a hard-fought series. He even went out of his way to compliment head coach Darvin Ham for the job he did, believing he deserves to remain with the Lakers.
“I would be remiss, I think Darvin Ham is a hell of a coach. That’s not an easy job. I think Darvin does it with class and I think he and his staff deserve credit for that. He’s a good man, good coach, and I wish him all the best. Hopefully, he’ll be around there for a long time because he deserves to be,” Malone said.
“And a credit to their team. They’re not an easy out. LeBron James is arguably the greatest player of all time. Anthony Davis is a Hall of Famer. They gave us all we can handle and we did not want to get on that plane and go back to L.A. … I got to give the Lakers a lot of credit, that was a hard fought series. A lot harder than that 4-1 final score would indicate because we had to scrap for every game that we won in this series.”
Malone is right that it was a hard-fought series that could have gone either way. His team is moving on to the second round though while the Lakers head into an offseason that will be filled with questions and potential changes as they still search for banner No. 18.
Darvin Ham ‘highly unlikely’ to return as Lakers head coach
Despite Michael Malone’s praise, it does not appear that Darvin Ham will be returning to the Lakers next season as early reports indicate he is ‘highly unlikely’ to keep his job.
While Ham did some good things in his two years at the helm of the Lakers, he also fell short in a lot of other areas, which is why the organization is in the place it’s in and likely to make another change.
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