Darvin Ham closed last night’s OT loss with an interesting closing five.
Though your Los Angeles Lakers seemingly expended too much energy closing the gap after falling behind the visiting Boston Celtics by 20 points midway through the third quarter of an eventual 122-118 overtime defeat, it seems they may have settled on a closing lineup Darvin Ham can trust.
Interestingly, that lineup featured not one, not two, but three bench players. The inclusion of $47.1 million Sixth Man of the Year candidate Russell Westbrook is hardly a surprise. But it’s fascinating that Austin Reaves and Troy Brown Jr. both made the cut over, say, Lonnie Walker IV and Patrick Beverley. Walker, who has proven himself to be a bargain addition this season on a $6.5 million mid-level contract, got some spot minutes in the overtime period.
Westbrook reflected on the lineup’s solid chemistry in his postgame remarks:
The 6’5″ Reaves and 6’6″ Brown can convincingly guard a variety of players, and Reaves has been a knockdown shooter this season, currently with shooting splits .511/.376/.866. Reaves’s 37.6% on triples comes on a decent-volume 3.1 tries a night. Brown is shooting well from the charity stripe (he has made 100% of his 17 free throw tries this season) and a bit below average (31%) from deep, but is connecting on a solid 42.9% of his looks overall and is athletic and longer than the 6’4″ Walker, who’s a better shooter and fairly quick, but not as versatile a defender.
The fit makes much, much more sense than that of one of both of Schroder and Beverley. Beverley is still a good perimeter defender, but he’s such a non-threat to do much of anything on the other end of the floor that it almost negates his impact. One wonders if Reaves or Brown will be slotted into the starting lineup ahead of either Schroder or Beverley (ideally both, to be honest) to give that initial unit a bit more size and shooting.
