Because of injuries and poor play, the Los Angeles Lakers and their head coach, Darvin Ham, have had to regularly juggle their starting lineup and rotations.
On Monday versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, Ham went back to the lineup he started this season with: D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves in the backcourt, Taurean Prince and LeBron James at forward and Anthony Davis at the 5.
It worked. L.A. defeated the streaking Thunder, 112-105, to improve to 20-21.
Ham said he went with this combination to surround James and Davis with offensively skilled players and that he plans on sticking with this starting unit (h/t Lakers Nation).
Darvin Ham discusses his takeaways from tonight's win over Oklahoma City. pic.twitter.com/wAfkzxdyKt
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) January 16, 2024
“Just wanted to put as much skill and shotmaking on the floor around our two captains,” Ham said. “And those five, they’ve been pretty much our most consistent guys throughout the season thus far. So just put them together.
“And like I said, for the foreseeable future, that’s going to be our lineup, barring any type of injury. I thought it went well. It was a hell of a night. A lot of contributions. Talked about everybody pouring into one another, covering for one another, helping each other be great on both sides of the ball. And I think we saw that tonight.”
Versus Oklahoma City, the Lakers didn’t score a lot of points, but they shot 52.4% from the field and had 30 assists and 21 fast-break points. Despite lacking any above-average defenders other than Davis in their starting lineup, they locked down one of the NBA’s best offensive teams by holding it to 41.7% overall and 30.6% from 3-point range.
Los Angeles will have the opportunity to build on what it did on Monday when it hosts another high-scoring team, the Dallas Mavericks, on Wednesday.
