The Lakers beating the Pelicans in the play-in told Darvin Ham a lot about where the Lakers currently stand.
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The Lakers were able to pull out the win against the Pelicans on Tuesday 110-106, securing themselves as the seventh seed.
The Lakers’ victory was far from a given, as they didn’t secure it until the closing seconds.
After the game, head coach Darvin Ham discussed his biggest takeaways after such a hard-fought win.
“Just the grit,” Ham said. “The grit of our group. Had a little bit of a cushion, they start making…their run, threw some heavy blows at us. We kept fighting back. Meet force with force. Blessing to Willie and his staff, his crew. That’s a hard, hard ball club to play. Their length, their athleticism, their skill, their ability to shoot the ball, Zion and his nonstop relentlessness and attacking downhill.
That’s a hell of a team we just got past. But it revealed a lot about us and what we’re made of. The way these two games went, one was a fairly big cushion throughout the game and then tonight was hard fought, as we anticipated. I’m just proud of our guys just doing the little things; taking charges, whether it was Bron or different people taking charges, coming up with big defensive rebounds, D’Lo getting back, sprinting back, coming up with a huge steal late, hitting a huge bucket in front of their bench to go up four. Guys stepping up making their free throws, it was a lot. A lot. We had some point blank shots that we missed that we normally make but we didn’t hang our heads. We just kept fighting.”
The Lakers getting together and focusing on all the details is the path towards this team reaching their ultimate goal. Everyone was on top of their game. LeBron was aggressive on the boards, Taurean Prince hit his jumpers and Gabe Vincent brought the defensive toughness.
More of that will be needed this weekend as the Lakers head to Denver to face the Nuggets. For now, Ham sees this team doing the little things necessary to win competitive ball games and as long as that happens, the Lakers will have as good a chance as anyone at beating the Nuggets.