What went wrong for the Los Angeles Lakers?

The Los Angeles Lakers' 2024 season came to an end at the hands of the Denver Nuggets, who defeated them 4-1 in their first-round playoff series. The Lakers hoped to build on their Western Conference Finals appearance a year ago, but fell short in that goal. We'll take a look at what went wrong for them this season. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference.

For much of the year, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham received consistent criticism from observers around the sport, and perhaps from in his own locker room.

Bleacher Report wrote a story back in December about Ham's inability to adjust, especially after a bad loss to the Chicago Bulls. Fans piled on, wondering how Ham decided to stick with certain lineups.

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The Los Angeles Times took a different approach with Ham's job security, saying that he should not be fired back in January. After all, Ham led the Lakers to the Western Conference Finals in 2023.

However, that Los Angeles Times piece did appear to admit that players had reduced confidence in him, and that the organization didn't seem to stand by him fully anymore. Whether Ham truly was a significantly worse coach in his second season in Los Angeles almost didn't matter, because the perception of his coaching ability was irreparably tarnished.

The Lakers were probably also expecting a little bit more of an improvement from Austin Reaves in his third NBA season. While he did improve in a couple of statistical categories, he shot worse from the three-point line this year.

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While The Orange County Register wrote about Reaves accepting the challenge on defense this season, metrics and the eye test reveal that the swingman wasn't productive on that end of the floor. Yardbarker called out his less than acceptable defensive play in January, saying that he was struggling mightily.

It's hard to look at the totality of D'Angelo Russell's 2023-2024 campaign and call it anything but a success. He suited up in 76 games, averaged 18 points per game, with over six assists. He also shot 41 percent from three-point range, which was important to provide spacing for LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

However, Russell's production was all over the map against Denver, when Los Angeles needed him to be a reliable third scorer. He went 7-11 from three point distance in Game 2, and made four threes in Game 4, but had trouble getting anything going in Games 1, 3 and 5. The lack of consistency doomed the Lakers in what was largely a competitive series.

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Lakers fans have to be kicking themselves after the playoff ouster, as they lost two games to the Nuggets on the final possession. In those sequences, Jamal Murray buried a jumper that ended Game 2 and Game 5.

Davis switched out to guard Murray on his buzzer beater in Game 2, and Reaves was on the Nuggets' point guard during his Game 5 series-clinching bucket in the paint. Reaves wouldn't have been the first choice as a defender on that play, and while Davis did a pretty good job contesting the short, Los Angeles would ideally have had someone else on their roster try to stick Murray there.

The Lakers finished the season with a 47-35 record, which only got them into the play-in tournament in the West. Had they played in the Eastern Conference, that mark would have netted them the fifth seed. It doesn't work that way, of course, but the Lakers knew they had little margin for error.

Any team could point to their schedule and bemoan defeats earlier in the season, but one or two games with the opposite result could have boosted Los Angeles' fortunes immensely this year. Losing the Bulls, San Antonio Spurs and Brooklyn Nets, for example, might have caused them to miss out on a fifth or sixth seed, which may have allowed them to avoid Denver in round one.

Los Angeles won the NBA title in 2020, so fans of other teams won't feel too bad for the Lakers' recent stretch. However, they pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table by trading for Davis, which has left their cupboard bare from a draft capital perspective. Bleacher Report wrote that the Lakers might keep their 2024 first round pick, but the New Orleans Pelicans have a right to claim it.

The Lakers thought that their peripheral moves would be enough to help the team make another deep playoff run, but that wasn't the case. Their offseason signing of Gabe Vincent and in-season signing of Spencer Dinwiddie didn't quite put them over the top. Vincent missed the majority of the season nursing a knee injury.

LeBron James continues to defy logic and Father Time at age 39, but he isn't going to be able to lead a team to a title on his own at this stage of his career. Davis had a great season in 2023-2024, but Los Angeles will need contributions elsewhere in order to get back to contention in the Western Conference.

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