Skip Bayles fires take on Lakers coach Darvin Ham's 'egregious' LeBron James problem
02/05/2024 00:50
When it comes to LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, FOX Sports personality Skip Bayless will never run out of ideas to criticize the four-time league Most Valuable Player. So, when Los Angeles fell prey in the first round to Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets, part of the consequence was to hear Bayless put the 39-year-old on blast just like usual.
Bayless even thinks that James’ on-court behavior during the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs was partly to blame for the way things went for the Lakers and why the end of Ham as the team’s head coach is seemingly inevitable.
“It feels like Darwin has to go because that’s the one piece to the puzzle that is so utterly replaceable so quickly. You can just do it without any cap problems or you can just do it And yet, I still think he did a good enough job to keep his job because I’ll say it again. Against Denver, they’re right there in every game and I give him some credit for that, some credit,” Bayless said during a recent episode of Undisputed.
“The problem was when LeBron threw his fit, it was so egregious, it was so outrageous and it was clearly directed at him. And I don’t think LeBron would have thrown that fit on coach Spo [Erik Spoelstra] even back in the early days. I just don’t think he would have done that because you build up communication and respect and you just don’t, you’re not gonna go there,” Bayless added.
Skip Bayless rips LeBron James amid Darvin Ham’s uncertain Lakers future
Bayless also went on to say that a reason why Ham was not able to think straight in the most crucial stretches of Game 5 of the Nuggets series was James’ body language.
“He’s hopping up and down, literally hopping mad and he was right. And then Darvin sort of loses it in the closeout game and he gives into Austin Reeves and they challenge and then he gives into AD at the end and they lose their timeout.”
Ham’s job with the Lakers was already a major talking point long before Los Angeles met the Nuggets in this postseason. The early exit from the playoffs, however, has made the noise about it louder, internally and externally. While there’s no concrete update yet on Ham’s future with the Lakers, the expectation is that he will be gone soon. He would have suppressed much of that notion if the Lakers found a way to defeat the reigning NBA champs in the playoffs, but that job clearly was a task too hard to accomplish for the Purple & Gold.
Nevertheless, Ham still deserved credit, as Bayless mentioned, for making the Nuggets work. The Nuggets let LA win just one game in the previous series, but the Lakers put up a fight and provided a tough test for Jokic and company. Two of the Nuggets’ victories were from Jamal Murray’s late-game heroics.
During the series, James led the Lakers in points with 27.8 per game and assists with 8.8 per outing. He also paced Los Angeles in steals (2.4) and shot 56.6 percent from the field and 38.5 percent from behind the arc. But those numbers simply don’t interest Bayless as much as James’ flaws.
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