Darvin Ham says Lakers allowed officiating to ‘bother’ them in Kings loss

There is plenty of blame to go around in the Lakers’ loss to the Kings, but Darvin Ham points to the team’s frustrations with officiating as a factor in the result.

There is no need to mince words: the Lakers’ defeat to the Sacramento Kings was the most disappointing one of the season. The Lakers entered the game needing the victory to gain ground in the West.

And they didn’t just lose, they were dominated for the majority of the matchup. They took a 19-point lead in the first quarter, turned it into a 21-point deficit in the third, and ended the night with a 10-point loss.

After the game, head coach Darvin Ham expressed his frustration with the team’s reaction to the officiating.

“We’ve been talking about having a next play mentality.,” Ham said. “Some things start going against us and just the frustration, I thought the officiating – I’m not blaming officiating, I thought we allowed that to bother us.”

Officiating wasn’t the main factor in the loss, but it was a factor. Anthony Davis ended up in foul trouble, forcing Ham to sit him longer than he wanted to, resulting in the Kings controlling the game.

Now, that’s a self-inflicted error, but it was forced by the number of fouls AD had. So, I consider it an outside influence, even if fans might not want to give Ham any grace on his decision-making.

With the officiating altering things and the Kings running away with the game, frustration grew and Ham discussed what it was like being in that moment.

“Frustration makes cowards of us all, just like fatigue,” Ham said. “You try to get something back, you start going out on your own, you preoccupy with something that you can’t control such as officiating instead of just figuring out how you can make plays, get stops and, a lot of times, just competing harder. You can scheme and do whatever all you want to but there were certain stretches as we’re trying to fight our way back spearheaded by LeBron and him exploding in that second half, that third quarter. If you just fly around – AR flying around, saving balls – TP gets a big block at the rim, when we play like that, that physicality needs to be our identity.

“That right there, we’ve shown when we play like that, things turn out great for us.”

When calls don’t go your way, it is hard not to respond negatively. Things can just snowball and the details get ignored. Players start not getting back on defense and it’s harder to stay aggressive attacking the paint when you fear the whistle will be unkind to you.

It’s no surprise that this stretch of rough calls contributed to the tide turning and staying in Sacramento’s favor.

Things didn’t turn out great for the Lakers on Wednesday, but they’ll have to shake it off quickly and regroup for the weekend’s matchups. There are only 18 games left to make the play-in/playoffs and push for banner No. 18 and as farfetched as that goal seems right now, they have to fight to try and make a run for it.

You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.