Not his starting five, but what Coach Ham blames the Lakers in the loss to Boston

One of the biggest issues the LA Lakers have been having this season so far has been injuries and coach Darvin Ham's incapacity to manage the roster correctly, and the recent struggles following the In-Season Tournament win are proof of it.

“We came out a little lethargic,” Ham said. “Just coming off a long trip and then the whole Christmas circumstance of the holiday or whatever, early game, took us a little bit of time to get going. But we had some great looks early. A couple of bad turnovers but for the most part when you go back and look at the shots we got, theirs went in and ours didn’t but we had some really terrific looks at the rim. Our guys kept fighting.

“It was a tough start but second quarter we really made up some ground. Closed the first quarter out good, made up some ground in the second quarter and made it a game, third quarter came out and then we put them on the free-throw line. Fourteen free throws for them in the third after holding them to nine for the entire first half. I think it hurt us big time. It really puts your defense in jeopardy and causes you to kind of play on your heels when they get in the penalty that quickly, especially against a good team like that. They’re gonna make you pay for every mistake you make.

“We fell asleep in transition defense at times and they were able to get behind us and get layups. There was a miscommunication about matchups, so Al [Horford] hit a huge open 3 in front of the bench. So a lot of work to do. I told the team after the game, it’s not so much that I don’t think our level of talent or our competition, there are a lot of great teams and no nights off in this league anymore, but we can’t skip the details."

What makes Austin Reaves confident on the team course-correcting things

What gives Reaves confidence in the Lakers’ ability to figure things out is how they finished last season. “You go back to last year and kind of how we figured things out late in the year and ran with it,” the Lakers guard added. “I feel like we, at that time, had a real good understanding of what we were, who we were, and what we were doing every single night. Unfortunately for the first part of this year, we didn’t have that lineup to start to kind of plant that foundation.”