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Dave McMenamin, ESPN Staff Writer
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — If the Los Angeles Lakers‘ season ends with a sweep in Game 4 of their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets, Darvin Ham is going down with the same guys who got them there.
“I’m not changing my starting lineup,” Ham said Friday after L.A. had a film session in lieu of practice.
Down 0-3 against the Nuggets a year ago in the Western Conference finals, Ham took D’Angelo Russell out of the starting lineup for Game 4, which L.A. lost 113-111.
This time, with Russell going scoreless on 0-for-7 shooting in Game 3 (0-for-6 from 3) and seemingly disengaged from the team in the fourth quarter Thursday as he sat on the end of the bench by himself while L.A. huddled, Ham is sticking with his point guard.
“You want to give your players a chance to make good for themselves,” Ham said. “There were questions about that after Game 1 and you saw what we did in Game 2. He got back in the gym, as he’s always done, and worked on his stuff. And he provided a great source of income in Game 2. Although we came up short, he was one of the reasons we were able to be in the game.”
Indeed, Russell — who declined to speak to reporters Friday again after also declining to do so in the postgame window following Game 3 — shook off a 6-for-20 shooting performance to start the series by scoring 23 points in Game 2 and tying a franchise record for playoff 3s in a game, going 7-for-11.
“You have to trust your players,” Ham said. “And just believe in them. And when they see that belief, then they tend to perform at a high level.”
Lakers forward Rui Hachimura said Ham showed clips of L.A. playing at a high level in the first quarter of Game 3 — jumping out to an 8-0 lead and holding a 33-23 edge heading into the second — to let the Lakers see how they can hold their ground against the defending champs, despite Denver having now won 11 straight games in the matchup.
“We watched it and we talked about how we were going to continue that,” Hachimura said. “Just the same energy, same way we communicate, [the way] we do everything on the court.”
Hachimura said that the Nuggets’ continuity of their roster has been the difference maker.
“We just don’t have enough experience,” Hachimura said, alluding to the fact that much of the roster came together at the trade deadline about 15 months ago. “They’ve been together for like five years.”
So, Hachimura was asked, even though the Lakers are on the brink of being swept for the second straight year and L.A. is a franchise that prides itself on its 17 championships as the standard, is this a group worth keeping together to gain that experience?
“In my opinion, yes,” Hachimura said. “We have the guys here. We have the talent, for sure. I don’t think anybody can beat us, just the talent-wise. We just got to put everything together. … We have the guys that can beat any team in this league.”
Any team, that is, except Denver.
The Lakers will get a crack at it again Saturday (8:30 ET, ABC) for a chance to extend their season.
If not, they’ll begin an offseason during which many more questions about the viability of this group staying together will sure to swirl.
“Guys are irritated, frustrated, fed up, ready to make a change in terms of not continuously going down this road,” Ham said. “And the overall theme [today] was just our mindset. [We can] belabor the problems and what’s gone on up to this point or shift our focus to, ‘How do we stay alive?'”
A win Saturday would provide life to the season for a few more days, at the very least.
“We’ve played some good basketball against Denver, it’s just that we haven’t been able to pull these out,” Ham said. “So hopefully tomorrow will be different.”