Darvin Ham has had more NBA Cup success than any coach in the league since the tournament was established. He led the Los Angeles Lakers to the inaugural Cup title a season ago while he was the head coach of the storied organization.
Fast forward to Tuesday night, and Ham — who’s now the lead assistant coach of the Milwaukee Bucks under Doc Rivers — saw his team win another NBA Cup championship. In the title game, his Bucks defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder by 16 points, and Giannis Antetokounmpo was Milwaukee’s top performer with a 26-point triple-double.
After the Bucks came out on top over the Thunder, Ham went off on the Lakers and suggested that he did a better job leading the team from the sidelines than he gets credit for.
“To do as well as I did, I swear to God, anywhere else I’m probably looking at an extension with what I did,” Ham said. “I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking actual facts. They go from not making it to the playoffs to the final four in the NBA, the conference finals. And then you win the in-season tournament, navigate through all the injuries and win both of your play-in games to get to the playoffs.
“People always talk about us losing to Denver, but they never talk about how we got to Denver. We beat a kick-ass young squad in Memphis and we beat Golden State.”
The Lakers still mark the only NBA team that Ham has been the head coach of, and he was in that role for Los Angeles for two seasons (from the 2022-23 campaign through the 2023-24 season). He was hired to replace Frank Vogel, who was fired after he coached Los Angeles to just 33 victories in the 2021-22 season.
In Ham’s two seasons leading the Lakers, Los Angeles held a regular-season record of 90-74, which equates to a winning percentage of 54.9 percent. The Lakers also reached the playoffs in both years under Ham, though they proved to have much more of a productive run in 2023 than they did in 2024.
In 2023, Los Angeles reached the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2020, and as Ham mentioned, the Lakers had to face stiff competition on their path to the conference finals. During the first round of the playoffs, Los Angeles played an upstart Memphis Grizzlies team that finished the regular season as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.
After the Lakers sent the Grizzlies home in six games, their next playoff matchup was versus the Golden State Warriors, who were the defending champions at the time. It took six games for Los Angeles to come out on top in that series as well before it was swept by the Denver Nuggets with the right to represent the West in the NBA Finals up for grabs.
