Russell Westbrook will be at the heart of the Darvin Ham project

Introduced with great fanfare by Rob Pelinka, then applauded by the assembly, darvin ham he went through the press conference drill for the first time as a Lakers coach.

Nine years after his departure as an assistant to join Mike Budenholzer in Atlanta, and then follow him to Milwaukee with an NBA championship title at stake, the former winger thus presented the guidelines of his new project and his game philosophy.

“I think it’s a 360 degree coaching style”answered. “The two parts of the field are connected. You hear about these offensive gurus, these defensive gurus, but both sides of the field influence each other. If you are able to defend very well, it will also show in your attack. Because you’re not going to face a defense on the spot. If you let the opponent score, your offense will be affected, because you will play a defense instead. You have to know how to balance, we talked about it a lot with Coach Bud’”.

“Russell is one of the best players our league has seen”

He also highlighted the importance of being competitive, united and responsible “. His main missions will be to move the group forward trying to integrate the “role players” in the best possible way in the Westbrook-James-Davis trio from which he will also have to get the most out of it.

Main question to date, Russell Westbrook will be an integral part of Darvin Ham’s project, who took the opportunity to recall the resume of his leader with a controversial status.

“Make no mistake about it. Russell is one of the best players our league has ever seen.”He launched. “There’s still a ton under the hood. I don’t know why people tend to devalue him. I’m going to address him like every player I’ve ever met. We’re going to talk about our running habits, with the ball, without the ball. And the team, the team rhythm, and trying to establish a rhythm, between LeBron, Russ, AD, and sharing the load, on defense and offense. It’s on defense that you’re going to see us make our most progress. We’ve got to go all out on defense, yeah no, we will not have options, the attack will not even matter”.

“We had great conversations with Russell, and the main word that came up was sacrifice”

In the room, Russell Westbrook listened religiously to his coach, who was also invited to talk about his first trades with his All-Star leader.

Darvin Ham then insisted on the importance of the notion of sacrifice, which should also be one of his watchwords next season, both for Russell Westbrook and the rest of the team.

“We had great conversations with Russell, and the main word that came out of that was sacrifice. We are going to sacrifice ourselves, no matter what we have to do. And it’s not just about Russ, it’s also about the sacrifices LeBron and AD will have to make and even the last name on our list, always keeping in mind that it all starts with defense. As for his role, I expect him to be as tenacious and energetic a player as he has been throughout his career.”