Darvin Ham says Lakers kept things in their pockets defensively against Nikola Jokic

After mixed results in Game 1 against Nikola Jokic, Darvin Ham said the Lakers have other coverages to throw at the Nuggets big man this series.

As a whole, the Lakers’ Game 1 loss to the Nuggets felt a lot like the preceding eight over the last two years. A valiant effort from the purple and gold was undone in the final minutes as Denver walked away with a win.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

That isn’t to say, though, that the details in the middle of the all-too-familiar formula. The Lakers tried new things against Nikola Jokic defensively. They didn’t really work as he finished 15-23 from the field for 32 points. But they tried them!

The Lakers sent double teams as Joker, defended him with Rui Hachimura and had him go mano y mano with Anthony Davis with varying degrees of success and failure.

Postgame, head coach Darvin Ham discussed the decision to have Hachimura — who Jokic shot 8-10 against, according to NBA’s match-up data — defend the soon-to-be MVP and what the plan for Jokic is moving forward this series.

“We have a couple of different things in that playbook,” Ham said. “Again, we’re going to go investigate the film. We wanted Rui to be active and energetic and try to use his athleticism to deny opportunities. Let’s face, you go back and look what type of shots those were that allowed him to go 8-9, I’m sure a bunch of them were contested. They weren’t open.

“(Jokic’s) a hell of a player. You’re going to play great defense and he’s still going to score. I see it every day when teams try to stop LeBron. Or AD, for that matter. Again, just continuously fighting the fight. And, yeah, if we have to go to something else adjustment wise, we do have a couple of more things that we can throw at them. We’re comfortable where we’re at.”

Perhaps we’ve finally learned that the thing Ham’s had in his pockets all along was the other gameplans to use against Jokic!

Jokes aside, you aren’t going to throw the whole kitchen sink and every gameplan at Jokic in Game 1. A playoff series is about a series of moves and the Lakers feel they have a couple to make across the series.

And look, there’s a lot of discussion and focus about how the Lakers should or shouldn’t defend Jokic. But the next player or team to have the answer for stopping Jokic will be the first.

Not every puzzle has a readily available solution. We’re talking about not just arguably the best player in the league but one of the best big men of all time in his prime. There just may not be a solution for him right now!

A lot of fans look back to the 2020 Lakers as a team that had the answers to stopping Jokic, but that was a Jokic of four years ago. The closest approximation of those Lakers in the current NBA is the Wolves with Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns. In four games this season, Jokic averaged 33.3 points on 58.4% shooting against them. In the playoffs last year, he averaged 26.2 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists in five games.

I fear there just may not be a solution to this puzzle right now.

There’s a point in every all-time greats career where the league just has no ability to stop them. And we’re in that era for Jokic.

It’s unfortunate, obviously, for the Lakers as, more than any other team over the last year, they’ve felt firsthand how destructive Jokic is to the best-laid plans. There may be some more tricks to try that will hopefully slow him down, but we’re well past the days of stopping him.

Unless Darvin has some really special trick or time machine inside his pockets. Keep digging, just in case!

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.