Darvin Ham criticizes Lakers young players, says he’ll meet with them after late-game performance vs. Wizards

Garbage time quickly turned into crunch time on Wednesday against the Wizards thanks to a poor performance from the Lakers end-of-bench players.

The Lakers were up 123-109 with 1:44 left in the game on Wednesday. Darvin Ham did what any other coach would do: up by 14 with 104 seconds left, he emptied his bench, giving his veterans LeBron James and Anthony Davis some extra rest.

Then, a disaster class was performed.

The Lakers allowed a Jordan Poole 3-pointer and back-to-back layups by Eugene Omoruyi before a five-point outburst from Justin Champagnie, forcing coach Ham to call timeout and bring the starters back into the game.

In a season filled with a myriad of lows, you can add this lowlight to the reel.

“It’s unfortunate,” Ham said postgame. “When you’re a young player, whether you’re a rookie, second year, third year, whatever, even a vet, you’re trying to secure the win…No matter what time it is, there’s no rite of passage to be in this league. Whether you’re a player, coach, executive, it doesn’t matter.

“Even in ownership, there’s no rite of passage. No one owes you anything. When you’re trying to establish yourself and the type of player you are, you have to approach each and every minute – I hate the term garbage time. You’re playing in the NBA. There’s only so many spots and you get a chance to play, even if it’s the last 50 seconds, you go hard or you stay home. It’s like you’re trying to establish yourself and you never know who’s watching…You just got to have that mindset, the mindset that nothing is given. Everything is earned. I’ll sit down with a couple of our young players on Friday.”

The sequence didn’t result in a loss thanks to Davis blocking a 3-point attempt by Jared Butler. However, this moment highlighted a bigger problem: the Lakers bench is bad.

The bench lacks a consistent scorer and even struggles to score as a unit. In their victory against the Brooklyn Nets during this recent road trip, seven bench players played a combined 64 minutes for a grand total of two points.

As we head toward the postseason, it looks increasingly likely that the starters will be responsible for scoring everything and no lead will be safe if LeBron or Davis sits.

This isn’t a new issue for the Lakers. Garbage time has been trash all year — pun intended — with young guys just looking for their shot and a highlight so good it will force the coach to give them more time.

Instead of that result, we get a glimpse of a bad G-league team where everyone is looking out for themselves. This ends up producing a double negative: no one individually looks good and the team loses as well.

A conversation with these players is long overdue and I’m sure there have been talks before, but the one Ham gives this Friday has to be the most stern.

This is big-time basketball. If they are going to give that quality and effort, then this playoff rotation might be a very small one. And if these players want to know who is to blame, they need only look in the mirror.

You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.