LOS ANGELES — Already this season, the Lakers have struggled to stay healthy. Shortly before Wednesday’s game against Portland, more bad news arrived.
Both Troy Brown Jr. and Lonnie Walker IV, key pieces of the starting lineup for most of the season, missed the game with left foot soreness, the Lakers said. Brown was downgraded to questionable in the morning, while Walker was a scratch merely a half-hour before tip-off against the Trail Blazers.
Ham said Brown tweaked his left foot during an individual morning workout. Walker was scratched so late that no Lakers were available to add context before game time. The Blazers were playing without Damian Lillard, Nassir Little, Josh Hart and Gary Payton II.
Against a Portland lineup with just four players 6-foot-6 or taller, the Lakers went particularly small, starting Austin Reaves, Dennis Schröder and Patrick Beverley alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
It was the Lakers’ 12th starting lineup of the season. Inconsistent starting lineups, especially in the COVID-19 era, have been more of the rule than the exception for the Lakers, who had 41 starting lineups in their 82 games last season. But Coach Darvin Ham said that inconsistency wasn’t a big factor in the Lakers’ 7-12 start through their first 19 games.
“I think it’s indicative of circumstances, for the most part,” he said. “I mean, we’ve had guys come up with injuries. We’ve had guys come up with illnesses. It’s been a variety of reasons and so in the process of trying to find a consistent rotation, you’re going to go through that.”
Injuries meant that Ham could punt on a starting lineup dilemma: Beverley made his return to the starting lineup after a three-game suspension for shoving Phoenix’s Deandre Ayton in the back. Schröder, who replaced him in the lineup for three games, stayed put as well.
So far, Schröder has added a little more firepower (8.8 ppg) and playmaking (3.3 apg) than Beverley (4.1 ppg), who has also shot well below his career average from 3-point range (23.8%) despite describing himself as an “elite” catch-and-shoot player early in the season. But Ham emphasized Beverley’s importance to the Lakers’ defense, which has tailed off in recent games.
“Just telling Pat to go out there and do what he does, regardless of what time of the game it is,” Ham said before the game. “He’s a big piece of how we want to be and what our approach is going to be, specifically defensively. He’s had a chance to rest and further strength his body and I expect a big night for him tonight.”
BILLUPS LAUDS WESTBROOK’S NEW ROLE
As a former teammate on a championship squad, Portland coach Chauncey Billups has Ham’s ear when it comes to coaching advice. While Billups went through struggles in his first year as a head coach, he acknowledged Ham is under a different type of pressure.
“He’s with the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s totally different,” Billups said. “And he’s coaching one of the top few guys to ever play the game, and then three top-75 guys with expectations – I didn’t have that. A lot of things I can’t help him on. There’s a lot I can, but there’s a lot that I can’t.”
But one of the toughest calls Ham has made received a thumbs-up from Billups: the decision to move Russell Westbrook to the bench.
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Billups notoriously made the coaching decision back on Oct. 23 to sink Jusuf Nurkic off of Westbrook in the closing minutes, essentially disregarding the former MVP and beating the Lakers with the strategy. That was the last game Westbrook started – since then, he’s averaged 16.3 points, 7.9 assists and shot 35.9% from behind the arc as a reserve.
Billups said he could hardly believe the turnaround during the month or so since he last saw the Lakers.
“It was tough for him to ever do that with LeBron in the starting lineup, who has the ball in his hands, but we all knew that,” he said. “When Russ humbly took that backseat, it changed everything. It changed everything for the team. The team has played a ton better. Russ has played a ton better. I was watching one of the games where he was getting MVP chants. I said, ‘Damn, that’s a turn of events.’”