"We've got to come with competitive pride … that's all we should be concerned with, coming in here Saturday, having competitive pride," Ham said Thursday.

That competitive pride in Game 4 will be challenged by competitive chaos. If they get swept, it could be Ham's last stand, and the players surely know it, because all signs have been pointing to it.

Ham will be cited as the reason for this quote by LeBron James, who finished Thursday's game with three turnovers and several other miscues while appearing weary in several long stretches.

"We come out in the third quarter with not much energy or we can kind of lose track of rotations and detail that we had in the first half," James said. "I think a lot of that played into it."

Ham will also be cited for the reason behind this James quote about one of the coach's perceived biggest weaknesses, his lack of proper in-game adjustments.

"Regular season and postseason are two different things, they're different situations," James said. "So what happens in the regular season, obviously you build those habits in the regular season, but the game totally changes when you're in the postseason and you have to be able to make an adjustment."

All this postseason noise actually began after Game 2, when the players didn't react well to blowing that 20-point lead, with Davis openly upset with how the team is reacting to its coaching.

"We have stretches where we just don't know what we're doing on both ends of the floor," Davis said at the time.

Damning words, for sure, and Ham responded the next day, saying he disagreed with Davis' assessment.

"I mean, I just think sometimes when plays don't turn out the way you think they should, then the frustration sets in a little bit," Ham said. "But I don't think it's [from] us not being organized. I think I have incredibly talented coaches all along my staff. We pride ourselves, whether it's a practice, a shootaround, a film session, a game or whatever, we pride ourselves on being highly efficient and organized. I just chalk that up to being frustrated. It's an emotional game, the way it ended and all of that. But I'll agree to disagree on that one."

Furthering the questions surrounding Ham is an old video making the rounds on social media. It is a timeout strategy session from last season that shows him struggling to write anything cogent on a grease board. The video is old and out of context, but the perception is real, and this organization is all about perception.

It says here that the Lakers should chill.

It says here that they will never build a consistent championship contender if they keep changing coaches with every locker room gripe or lower bowl beef.

It says here the players need to take the sort of accountability publicly demanded by Austin Reaves on Thursday when he said, "You can talk about adjustments, you can talk about this and that, but at the end of the day, we've got to go put our best foot forward in basketball games ... man up and go win."

But no matter what anybody says, it's also obvious that the Lakers aren't in the same class as the Nuggets, they're as far from a title as they've been in recent years and somebody is going to have to pay.

Right or wrong, that bill could soon be addressed directly to Darvin Ham.

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