Alexander: Laker fans, take a deep breath
LOS ANGELES – All is well again in Lakerland.
For now.
As the Laker losing streak stretched to four games and the team’s devoted followers panicked as only they can, coach Darvin Ham made a comment Friday night about the idea that there are fans whose mindset is to live and die with each result and maybe lose sight of the big picture or the, long term prognosis.
Sunday evening, hours before the Lakers would end that four-game skid with a rousing 106-103 victory over the Clippers, he said, “I don’t think anyone sets out to fail. … Like, if anyone learned anything from last year, this thing goes in stages, right? And I know. I’m with the Lakers and I embrace it. I don’t run from it. I lean into it. And I just want us to be great, and it takes time to be great in the moment.”
There are, I suppose, two ways to look at it if you’re one of those whose mindset is what I call Laker Exceptionalism. Either last year’s midseason reset after a 2-10 start is a template for recovery, or it’s something that should never, ever, be necessary again.
This win – in which the Lakers held off a Clipper team that had been playing as well as anyone in the league the last several weeks, and did so with contributions from lots of different people – might be its own template, and in fact maybe needs to be.
Much of the outside chatter – the stories about about unhappy players, or about agents calling the general manager to complain that their clients weren’t getting sufficient opportunity, and the criticism of different lineups and Ham’s multiple combinations and substitution patterns – seemed to portray a team and organization in panic mode.
(Of course, no one had even mentioned the fact that, since the In-Season Tournament championship banner had been hung alongside the Lakers’ real championship banners, they’d lost eight of 10 going into Sunday’s game. And people thought the Taylor Swift “most consecutive sellouts” banner was a jinx.)
Seriously, injuries have been a factor in the Lakers’ issues. Indeed, the return of D’Angelo Russell – out the last three games with a tailbone contusion – made a difference Sunday night. Russell played 30:57 off the bench and made three big 3-pointers in the second half, including back-to-back treys in the third quarter that, as it turned out, gave the Lakers the lead for good at 75-73.
Cam Reddish and Taurean Prince also made big shots, Prince notably contributing a huge 3-pointer down the stretch and two free throws with 12.3 seconds left for a 105-101 lead. Christian Wood finished with 10 rebounds and made a 3-pointer of his own. Max Christie came off the bench to provide defense, as did Jarred Vanderbilt.
“It takes the others to win championships, to win basketball games,” Anthony Davis said. “Those guys played phenomenal tonight. And when those guys are playing well, it just makes me and Bron’s job a lot easier. Obviously, we have ultimate trust in those guys to throw ’em the basketball and to make shots and take big shots.”
But LeBron James noted another truism of sports: The best time to reinforce the habits necessary to win just might be after winning.
“It (the win) still don’t take away from the fact (of) how we’ve been playing for the last 11-12 games,” he said.
“It doesn’t fix everything, obviously, but it helps … We gotta steal more from the wins than we do from the losses. You lose, you’re like, ‘Look at it, this is why we lost, OK? We got to do this better.’ And you win, the first human instinct is to go, ‘We won.’ But no, we have to learn from the mistakes we had tonight, which we had all too many still.”
But these Lakers seemed more resilient than they’d been in a while, better at shaking off the last play and moving on to the next one rather than letting things snowball. That they did so against a team that had won five in a row and was 14-2 since the start of December was impressive in and of itself.
Ham was asked in his pre-game session if he felt like he was coaching for his job, and responded that while it comes with the coaching territory, “in no way, shape or form do I feel that way.”
Clippers’ coach Ty Lue noted that some of the same stuff they’re saying about his counterpart was also being heard last year around this time, when the Lakers were trying to dig out from a 2-10 start.
“And they went to the conference finals. And so are you giving the coach all the credit for that?” he asked. “I don’t think so. And I think D-Ham did a hell of a job last year, and the same thing this year.
“People think about Xs and Os, but it’s more than just Xs and Os in the NBA. Being a coach, it’s a lot to do with handling different personalities, different egos. It’s a lot that goes into it. And so the biggest thing, for me and D-Ham, is just keep doing what you believe in. And what he did last year was huge … that says a lot about what he can do as a coach.”
The NBA schedule, of course, stops for no team, and the afterglow of winning one only lasts until the next game, which in this case is Tuesday night against Toronto. But this one, at least, allows the Lakers to catch their collective breath.
“Oh, definitely, but we can’t be comfortable,” Ham said. “We still got a lot of work to do, but this is a huge, huge win, against an elite ballclub. It shows us what we can do once we band together and everyone just really focuses in on the job they have to do individually and collectively.”
Maybe Laker fans will relax, too. At least for a day.
jalexander@scng.com