The Los Angeles Lakers’ miserable run continued last night but coach Darvin Ham said his players would not “cry about it” and challenged them to play better.
The Lakers are 2-8 in their last 10 games following a 110-96 defeat to the Miami Heat, and appear a team struggling for cohesion and chemistry following a raft of injuries.
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Ham believes not having a settled squad has played a part in their struggles.
“We can’t find any consistency until we get healthy, it’s as simple as that. We’ve got to get healthy,” he said.
“When you’re dealing with different guys being in and out of the line-up that frequently, it’s damn near impossible to find a rhythm. That’s just being real.”
However, he accepts the players need to improve if they wish to get their season back on track.
He added: “We’re not executing. That team [Miami] played harder than us tonight, executed better than us tonight, more physical than us tonight. We got outworked, so it’s a bit of everything right now.
“If we keep on this train, it’s not going to be good for us.
“We got to attack and be more competitive, but we need guys to step up and play better.
“The reason we signed them is because we know what they can do. And so you got to come with that confidence each and every night and you got to fight through it.
“When things are not going your way, you can’t ball up in the corner somewhere and go cry about it. You got to step up and try to see how you can best assist your team in being successful.”
final pic.twitter.com/sM48YfsGo6
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) January 4, 2024
The Lakers have a favourable schedule in January with 11 of their first 12 games coming in LA and forward Anthony Davis has challenged the team to right the wrongs immediately when they host the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday.
Davis said: “We just got to compete, play hard and go out with a mindset of a must-win mentality, and hopefully that can propel us over to get back to .500 on Friday and then kind of put a streak together at home.
“We’ve been a really good home team thus far, and we got an opportunity to continue to build on that.
“But if we play how we played tonight, then it’s going to go south for us really bad.”
