LOS ANGELES — “We had a big, fat L staring us right in the eyes.”
If anything, Darvin Ham might be understating how close to defeat the Lakers (2-5) were on Wednesday night. It was staring at them, had its arms wrapped around them and its maw was enveloping them, preparing to swallow them whole. If Dyson Daniels had made just one of his two free throws, the whole thing would have been over.
Daniels gave them the chance they needed, but the Lakers changed things up, too. What won the game against the New Orleans Pelicans were key adjustments – some from the gut, but also difficult calculations that threatened to alienate key figures on the bench. Not everyone is going to be happy with their roles, but that’s the cost of winning, which Ham understands well.
“That’s the biggest thing, man, you can’t be afraid to make a decision,” he said. “A lot of people are gonna worry about what you guys are gonna say, or how it’s gonna look, or why is he in the game, why is he not in the game. You just gotta go with what works.”
A look at the key points in the Lakers’ comeback victory:
TYING SHOT
With just a little time left to tie a three-point game, Ham put Austin Reaves, his most trusted inbound passer, on the sideline, and set up a corner shot near the sideline bench. The play worked just about how it was drawn up …
… but Lonnie Walker IV missed it.
It’s going to get lost later how the Lakers actually had two attempts to tie the score, drawing up a sideline out-of-bounds play (SLOB) with 7.8 seconds left in the same spot for the player who had been their hottest scorer (it was actually the only shot in the fourth quarter Walker missed). Matt Ryan, who was signed to the team because of his 3-point shooting in the preseason, was not on the court.
Because the Lakers’ shooting has been so deficient, Ryan has gotten minutes this season. In the first half, he went 1 for 6 – a few of those were in-and-outs, Ryan noted. At halftime, he went to Ham and told him if he was given six more looks, he would make five of them. One of the traits Ham values most in a shooter is confidence.
“I said, ‘I’m with you, and that’s the mentality I want you to have,’” Ham said. “‘I’m gonna let you know, Matt, if you don’t shoot it, I’m gonna take you out of the game.’ So everyone has a niche that they have to carve out, and that’s his niche.”
Ryan hadn’t quite lived up to the guarantee (he was 1 for 3 in the second half to that point), but that attitude was part of the reason why Ham gave Ryan the final shot on the whiteboard. He told Reaves to “circle” LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but he wanted Davis to set a screen to get the ball to Ryan in the corner.
Reaves was skeptical the gambit could work. He had seen this play before, but a cross-court pass seemed too risky.
“I’ve seen this play a million times and I’ve seen it work maybe once,” he said. “But then nothing was open … And A.D. set a really good screen so I was like, ‘I got to throw it.’”
Ryan got both feet down inbounds, which as he put it is “all a shooter can ask for.” His launch was aided by the defensive confusion: Trey Murphy was stuck just a little too long to Davis, which was the point of using him to screen.
Ham said he didn’t use his ATO card, which might have kept him from cluttering his head in the end and as he put it “saved me a little bit.” The biggest factor might have not been the X’s and O’s, but merely the trust Ham had in Reaves and Ryan to make the play happen.
“I’d be curious to see what they (the Pelicans) thought when they saw him in the game,” he said. “But I trust the kid. I trust him. I trust all my players, especially putting them in position to make a shot.”
OVERTIME OFFENSE
The Lakers’ crunch-time offense lately has felt limited. It certainly looked that way during the closing minutes of what was shaping up to be a loss against the Pelicans.
James, who later acknowledged being bedridden with a non-COVID virus for days leading up to the game, was attacking New Orleans with a two-man pick-and-roll with Davis. On one late possession with just under two minutes left, James gained an upper hand: The action forced Larry Nance to switch off of Davis onto James, then James was able to get the ball to Davis in a mismatch against Naji Marshall – Davis missed a layup by an inch, but it was a good look.
Then, on a possession with less than a minute left, James and Davis ran the same play against the same personnel – only this time, Marshall denied the pass, forcing James into a one-on-one isolation against Nance, arguably the Pelicans’ best defender. James was forced into a difficult turnaround jumper that he missed, and the rebound sailed into New Orleans’ hands for an easy transition bucket.
Before Ryan’s stunning buzzer-beater, the Lakers hadn’t scored a field goal in three minutes, and they hadn’t notched a point on two possessions when they needed to score. Something had to change, and the Lakers determined it was who they were attacking.
“We found something in overtime with trying to get CJ (McCollum) in it – whoever CJ was guarding, screening for Bron,” Davis said. “Now he has to switch with CJ, or it might just be small-small pick-and-roll with Bron handling. Just trying to find where CJ’s guy was and make him have to guard the pick-and-roll. And we started getting what we wanted.”
If you look at the Lakers’ overtime shot chart: They got seven of their 10 shot attempts at the rim, and the one 3-pointer they made was a wide-open look for Walker. The Lakers moved away from having the ball in James’ hands for every possession: Patrick Beverley and Reaves ran pick-and-rolls that generated looks as well. The key was who McCollum was guarding – they targeted the matchup rather than keeping the stars involved in everything. On their first four possessions in the halfcourt in OT, McCollum was targeted in the action.
James acknowledged that he needed his teammates’ help in a 9-for-23 shooting night.
“That’s what team sports is all about,” James said. “You’re not always gonna be great, but it’s always great when you look to your left and look to your right and know someone’s gonna pick it up for you.”
CLOSING PERSONNEL
At one point, he was the shot in the arm the Lakers needed. Through the first half, he was stirring the pot for 11 points, seven assists and six rebounds, looking like the Lakers’ best star when his fellow headliners were performing below their usual standard. But that momentum got away from him beginning in the third quarter, when he and Ham clashed after he turned it over and didn’t get back on transition defense.
“That’s the first line of defense for us,” Ham said about the back-and-forth. “That’s the first thing we taught defensively in training camp. It’s a thing we talk about constantly. Especially against a team like this that loves to get out and run.”
When Ham moved Westbrook to a reserve role, he dangled the carrot of letting Westbrook finish games, which he did against Minnesota and Denver. But against the Pelicans, he made the tough call to put in Beverley (who it should be noted did not make a shot). But though Beverley has struggled to shoot it this year, he’s a slightly more credible threat than Westbrook when it comes to spacing – and Beverley himself campaigned to guard McCollum, who wound up shooting 3 for 9 in the fourth quarter and overtime. Beverley also grabbed a few critical rebounds late.
“Sometimes you gotta go with your gut,” Ham said. “And I put Pat Bev in as he ran past me a couple times, reminding me of his resume. And I made the switch to put him on CJ, and he did a hell of a job on him.”
It’s not to say Westbrook could not have closed out – maybe he could have. But it’s clear Ham has taken into account how Westbrook has been guarded late in games against the Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers this season. Westbrook was cheering his teammates in the overtime frame, but he was clipped in his post-game media session despite being asked laudatory questions about his performance: “Just competing,” he said a handful of times without additional context.
Closing lineups are going to be a battle as long as Westbrook remains on the team, and that’s just one of the lineup issues Ham has to contend with. He tightened the rotation in general on Wednesday, keeping Kendrick Nunn, Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damion Jones (despite the Pelicans’ huge starting lineup) out of the game. New Orleans coach Willie Green was forced to match up to the Lakers’ small-ball looks: Jonas Valanciunas and Jaxson Hayes played limited roles and had negative plus-minus ratings.
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While Ham touted Westbrook as a potential NBA Sixth Man of the Year candidate, it’s unclear whether the former league MVP and nine-time All-Star is enamored with adding that award to his mantle. But the bottom line is the most important, and Ham showed the will to put the team’s interests in front of one player on Wednesday night.
“I’ve seen guys wait their time and put in the work behind the scenes so when their number was called upon, they came out hitting on all cylinders ready,” Ham said. “And I’ve also seen the flip side of that where guys have a negative approach, a negative mentality, blaming the world, feeling sorry for themselves and then boom, something happens out of nowhere and they have to go in and play big minutes and they can’t connect physically or in the rhythm with the team at all. So my suggestion was to just keep working. You never know when your time is going to come.”
If anything, Matt Ryan is living, breathing evidence of that sentiment.
Every angle of Matt Ryan’s buzzer-beater to force OT! pic.twitter.com/YKPIZ5laht
— NBA (@NBA) November 3, 2022