Darvin Ham was one of the up-and-coming head coaches in the NBA when he accepted the offer to become the 28th head coach in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. However, after back-to-back play-in tournament appearances and consecutive series losses to the Denver Nuggets, Ham was fired, still with two years left on his deal.
During an appearance on the “Hoop Genius Podcast,” Darvin explained that his tenure in Los Angeles was a failure because he never had an elite team, as the Lakers lost too many players to acquire Russell Westbrook.
“It was a difficult situation,”said Ham. “Cause to get a player like that, you pretty much have to gut your team. And that’s essentially what happened. In order to get Russ on the Lakers, they had to part ways with Alex Caruso. They had to part ways with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma, and a lot of other players they weren’t able to get because the money wasn’t there. After all, now you have three essentially supermax players on your roster.”
Russ’ salary hindered the Lakers from adding good role players
Westbrook was already in Tinseltown when Ham arrived there. However, he is correct that the Lakers gave up several key players from their 2020 championship team solely to make the financial aspect of the equation work.
Caruso blossomed in Chicago and later became a key piece of the puzzle in Oklahoma City’s recent championship run. Meanwhile, Caldwell-Pope also became a championship piece, playing a key role on the 2023 Denver Nuggets title team. Kuzma went on to average less than a point shy of 20 per game in the next four years with the Wizards. Meanwhile, the Lakers ended up having a Big 3 of LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russ, but struggled to fill up the rest of the roster with limited cap space.
“Then now you got to go after lower level players who, God bless, they can they’re they’re capable players, but to be elite to win a championship in our league, you have to be elite and have an elite group. And a lot of times the financial constraints won’t allow you to do so,” he added.
The Lakers ended up trading Westbrook
What compounded the Lakers’ woes was that Westbrook ultimately proved not to be a good fit alongside LeBron and AD, so he struggled. Later during his L.A. tenure, he was relegated to a bench role and eventually traded in midseason 2023. Los Angeles got three good players for Russ in D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Malik Beasley. And Russell and Vanderbilt played a key role during the Lakers’ run to the 2023 Western Conference Finals.
However, Ham’s success was short-lived. During the 2022-23 NBA season, the Lakers finished with a 47-35 regular-season record and again needed to participate in the play-in tournament to make the playoffs. They faced the defending champions, the Denver Nuggets, in the first round of the playoffs and were swept. Ham was fired shortly after that.
Darvin returned to Milwaukee, where he won a championship as part of Mike Budenholzer’s coaching staff, and is currently the lead assistant for Doc Rivers. Meanwhile, the Lakers replaced him with JJ Redick, who was very lucky when the Lake Show acquired Luka Doncic in a trade last February.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Nov 8, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
