NBA IN-SEASON TOURNAMENT

December 7, 2023

Darvin Ham

Los Angeles Lakers

Semifinal Postgame

Lakers 133, Pelicans 89

Q. You're about a year and a half into this. Are you running out of ways to describe what LeBron James does out there and means to this team, and, I guess, bigger picture to this game?

DARVIN HAM: You know me, I'm a simple guy, so I just think to one word. Extraordinary. Otherworldly. That's two, I know. A one-of-one. That's a phrase. That's not a word.

But no, he is the ultimate tone-setter. Like for him, to go out from the start, just everything, from our meeting to our walk-through, everything, his communication, helping guys visually see what game plan we were trying to execute. And we were able to execute. His energy, him sacrificing his body, three charges. He set the tone for us on both ends of the basketball court for us tonight, and his teammates just follow suit. It's a huge, huge blessing to have that working in your favor and to be on the same side as that.

Q. AD defensively in the third quarter, what did you see working after LeBron had set that tone? The switching and the rim protection and all that coming together. How did you see that all happening?

DARVIN HAM: I just think that we have a lot of bodies. A lot of long, athletic wings and players where we can switch randomly. We can switch deliberately. AD is a huge, huge factor. Backing up and anchoring the back line of our defense, it allows Bron and Cam and Taurean and Rui, everybody, Austin, D-Lo, everybody, Max, to just play free and be aggressive. The biggest thing we talk about is, again, playing with multiple efforts, trying to have multiple efforts. Strategies defensively, they are not always going to be perfect. So you can't get discouraged. You just have to play with energy. Energy most times, most instances, they cover up the technical mistakes. So we have a lot of that.

Everybody understands what we're playing for and what a great opportunity to be in here in this city and in this tournament for us to reveal our competitive spirit top to bottom. I think that's what you saw tonight.

But everybody, again, just covering for one another. Constant communication. Constant effort.

Q. Karl Malone is the oldest MVP in his age-35 season. Do you feel like the way LeBron is playing right now, he should be in that conversations?

DARVIN HAM: Without question. Without question. The way he impacts winning, what he's doing at this stage of his career, without question. That's a no-brainer.

Q. We've known for some time that the league was going to have the inaugural In-Season Tournament this year. I wonder if you can remember the first conversations you had with maybe your leaders of the team, Anthony and LeBron, about what we want to do as a group in this thing, how we want to approach it. Was there any kind of galvanizing conversations where you all decided, like, hey, this is something we really want to prioritize and go for?

DARVIN HAM: I can't really pinpoint. I don't know if there was a moment or a conversations in particular. I just know we came into this year wanting to build continuity and cohesiveness as quickly as possible.

We felt like we had a leg up based on the moves we made at the deadline, going into the summer, being able to retain a bunch of our core, the pieces that we had acquired last year, adding some really good new pieces from offseason workouts to our September open jam to Bron's mini-camp to training camp.

Again, the focus was just always every day, how can we continuously build continuity and try to find a rhythm that we can sustain and get stronger as the season gets longer. There wasn't really any specific conversations about how we were going to approach this In-Season Tournament.

But that said, everyone knew once they start announcing what was at stake, the prize money -- and obviously it's a beautiful trophy. No disrespect to the trophy, but once they start announcing those numbers, it fell right in a line with what we are trying to do.

We are fortunate enough to start getting bodies back at the right time. We are just trying to build a rhythm and be the best team we can be and put our best foot forward on a daily basis. The tournament just happens to align with what we got going on in general.

Q. You talked about Bron setting the tone for the Lakers and for this game tonight. Do you think that he took the Pelicans out of what they were trying to do or maybe even kind of broke them within the context of this game?

DARVIN HAM: I mean, we got guys that are hawks, and he's right back there, along with AD, communicating coverages and yelling out switches. He switched a couple times. We had a random blitz in there. They hurt us early in the first quarter with rebounds and we were turning the ball over a little bit. We were able to clean that up in the second quarter.

You hear and feel his presence all over the place, and the guys respond. Cam and Taurean and having guys who can hold their own water individually defensively. That's a huge plus, and again it allows him to be random and active in the right kind of fashion, getting out, getting steals, pushing the pace, doing whatever we need to do, deflections and whatnot and putting a lot of pressure on the opposing team.

Q. Tyrese Haliburton has just been on a tear lately, and now you all face him and the Pacers in the In-Season Tournament here. What have you seen from him from afar and do you have any preliminary thoughts that you can share on a recipe to slow him down?

DARVIN HAM: No thoughts. Definitely no recipe. I would just say it's refreshing to see a young player of his magnitude. He's had a hell of a year, past 12 months, being named an All-Star, being selected to the USA team. He's just out there hooping. I watched a little bit of that game today. We'll dig into it more overnight and tomorrow, and as we go into our meeting tomorrow.

They are just out there having fun. They have got a bunch of young, high-level talent that's just out there having fun playing together, playing hard, making plays. And so we are definitely going to have our hands full. A huge win for them knocking off Milwaukee, and we can't take them for granted by any stretch. We'll do our preparation and come up with a good recipe that won't be shared once we land on something. But I can tell you the two main ingredients going up against this team: Again, we have to be ready to make multiple efforts and we definitely have to have a next-play mentality.

Q. Tonight there was the theme of you having some of your dominant performances as part of this tournament. How the team played through this tournament, have you learned something about this team that you may not have known before the tournament started?

DARVIN HAM: I mean, the thing I'm starting to see is when we lock in, and everybody is pulling the rope in the same direction and everybody is focused on the objectives within the game plan and the strategy that we are using to attack these teams on both sides of the ball, and when we sacrifice one another, we are damn near unstoppable.

It's a beautiful thing to see this early. Again, I think the intensity that this tournament brings reveals that because it's not just a regular-season game. It doesn't feel like that. The stakes are way higher and you see people in those delicate moments what they are truly made of, at least the beginning stages.

So it's a good precursor, and it's a good prep environment for what's to come four or five months later. I'm just learning that these guys are really, really competitive, obviously the guys we brought back and the new guys we added to the mix.