Lakers Notes: Darvin Ham, LeBron James, Stretch Run

Coach Darvin Ham said he doesn’t think that shortening the NBA season is a solution to players resting (a.k.a. “load management”), but that a break here and there in the schedule might.

“I don’t know if I would want to shorten the season. I just think we need to take a page of the NFL’s book and create some type of bye week,” Ham said, via Corey Hansford of Lakers Nation. “Because looking at the schedule now, I know there’s certain factors like television contracts and just the NBA being viewed as not wanting to be in too much competition with the other sports, you’re gonna have that for a while.

“You see football just ended with the Super Bowl that in turn pushes back the [NBA] All-Star break. The NFL adding an extra game to their season pushed their season back which in turn makes our All-Star break come a little bit later.”

As Ham noted, the Lakers and other teams have played close to 60 games before they got a break in the schedule. Most teams only have 22-23 games to go.

“I would love to see the NBA create some type of bye week for teams,”  Ham said, via Hansford. “And I know there’s talks about doing an in-season tournament and all that, and I think you can still do all of that. But to allow a team, whether it’s four or five days to just rest, get practice in, just take a break from the travel. It’s a lot of factors and I think that would be very, very useful and very welcomed.”

• The Lakers (27-32) currently sit in 13th in the Western Conference, with star forward LeBron James coming off a hand injury he suffered in the All-Star Game. But fear not, he suspected it’s not serious and won’t cause him to miss any time. “I’ll be fine,” he said, via Daniel Starkand of Lakers Nation. “I don’t think it’s too much to worry about.”
• In case you missed it, James called the Lakers’ final 23 regular-season games the most important of his career. We have that full story here.