175 comments so far and some hilarious, I thought worth posting here but just so many. This ONE though …. chef’s kiss
it's been up at the top of the list, for sure. everyone should apologize to vogel. and he had the advantage of russ being shamed by a full season of bad play to come off the bench! i think if russ would have come off the bench for vogel, he'd have figured out a decent enough offensive scheme and kept us as a top defense, and we'd be in the playoffs.
Yeah Ham gets entirely too much credit for Russ buying in. After last season, Russ realized his NBA career was on thin ice if he didn’t accept the bench role. Vogel praised Russ and gave him ample opportunities, but Russ wasn’t ready to accept his shortcomings. This has been the only “accomplishment” by Ham and it’s vastly overblown.
We can discuss potential trades as much as we want, but with this coach we're not going anywhere. You can put Steph and Jokic on this team and Ham/they would somehow find a way to lose.
I never liked Frank that much but last year you could tell he just didn't have the right players to fit his system. Ham just looks totally clueless, helpless and lost out there. Does Ham even have a system?
Some of this s*** seems unreal. He played a zone against a scorching hot shooting team. A zone against a team who couldn't miss from outside!
It’s the most counterintuitive thing I’ve seen in NBA coaching. And this doesn’t give you any benefit on the other side because these guys can’t shoot at all. It’s not like it’s D’antoni small ball where at least you get red hot offense out of it.
The other thing watching the game last night is that being this small hurts in obvious ways: Giddey destroying Bevs on that one play. But also in less obvious ways. -Both NO and OKC killed the Lakers (and I'd argue you this was the biggest cause of the losses) by getting hands into passing lanes on careless pass. Lakers don't have the length to do the same and it's easier for other teams to pass the ball into crowded areas because of the lack of length -3 point contesting issues: even if Bevs, Westbrook, and Shroeder can get out to a shooter most of these can shoot over them. Crazy that Ham has played a regular NBA lineup a few times these past games (brown/walker/christie at SG) and it has worked.
Ham right now: imagine D-Lo, Shroeder, Bevs, the ghost of Brick, and Lebron at C filling the lanes! Maybe that should be the starting lineup?
Been gone 4 hours, see that trade went down, starting here and working my way up to all the other threads in LD. Thank gawd the Russ experiment is over and wish him well. Am curious as heck if anyone will want to pick him up on the buy out market if that happens. And crap I have seen nothing yet that BevMo has been taken away from him! I tell you in my disgust eventually turned to coach hate over Mike Brown and then D’antoni and Byron Scott (never got that worked up over Luke) …. what Ham has been doing and not doing with our roster is right up there with the worst of my feelings toward those guys. I just have zero faith in him getting the best value out of what we have now or being able to reach the playoffs. He’s going to have to work his way through all of his “inflexible” (the worst part about him) vision and mistakes and we don’t have time. Why is he suddenly going to not fall back on all his bone headed crutches when the going gets tough in games, while he continued to lose and not do that so far to put us in this situation we’re in now. Poor on D and no time to suddenly get a clue with this. I’ve turned into glass always half empty guy with regard to him. Can only hope a miracle happens with the situation. Edit …. LMAO!! While I was typing this I see once again “Doc” above feels exactly the same way. Guess I’m as smart as one of the smart Twitter guys, in my disgust about Ham at least.