Lakers Rumors: HC Darvin Ham Expected to Be Fired After NBA Playoff Loss to Nuggets

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The future for Darvin Ham as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers doesn't look good in the wake of the team's first-round playoff loss to the Denver Nuggets on Monday night.

Per The Athletic's Shams Charania, Jovan Buha and Sam Amick, Ham is considered "highly unlikely" to return next season after another "unflattering" postseason defeat to the Nuggets:

"The Lakers' unflattering finish leaves Ham's future as head coach in serious peril, multiple league and team sources tell The Athletic, with some stakeholders indicating it's highly unlikely he'll return. The plan is to reassess everything that went wrong in the coming days before making a final decision. In 2022, Ham signed a four-year deal in the range of $5 million per season, so the team would be assuming the remainder of his deal if he is fired."

ESPN's Dave McMenamin added Ham's job is "very much in jeopardy" and a decision will be made by the organization in the coming days.

Some of the rationale for potentially moving on from Ham was his lineup shuffling as the Lakers went through a 3-10 stretch after winning the in-season tournament, according to Charania, Buha and Amick:

"During the 13-game skid, the Lakers used six starting lineups, including two variations of an all-wing lineup—James, Davis, Taurean Prince, Vanderbilt and either Cam Reddish or Hachimura—for five games (the team went 2-3). The decision to bench both Reaves and Russell, the team's consensus third- and fourth-best players, did not sit well with many within the organization and locker room, according to team and league sources."

Ham's rotation choices were said to be "sometimes so apparent that even opposing players would be made aware of it while sharing the court with the Lakers" because he was being "openly criticized" for allowing subpar shooters to take wide-open threes that they were "slow to adjust once a poor shooter was in a rhythm."

The Lakers are built around two stars and several role players who have historically been inconsistent throughout their career. Hachimura shot 44.9 percent from three-point range over his final 43 games over the regular season but was just 5-of-16 behind the arc in the series against the Nuggets.

D'Angelo Russell had the best shooting season of his career with a 41.5 percent success rate from three but was only 14-of-44 on those attempts in five games vs. Denver.

Los Angeles' decision to essentially run back the same team it had at the end of last season produced the same result. The Lakers haven't been at the level of the top teams in the Western Conference since winning the NBA Finals during the 2019-20 season.

There's always going to be more pressure on the Lakers head coach, especially with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the roster, but Ham didn't seem to do much to endear himself to this team with his lineup tinkering.

The result could be Ham getting fired two years after the Lakers hired him. He has a 90-74 record with two postseason appearances in Los Angeles.