Lakers' LeBron James, Anthony Davis are worried after another blowout loss

The Los Angeles Lakers have been up and down this campaign, and if they continue this trend, they will only have the In-Season Tournament to show for at the end of the NBA season.

Darvin Ham’s team has alternated solid efforts with not-so-good ones, and he’s looked overwhelmed and over his head from time to time. Even so, they still have the potential to be better than his.

The Lakers have lacked a consistent effort, and they’ve dug themselves into big holes early in games way too often. Needless to say, LeBron James isn’t satisfied with that.

Lakers Cannot Relax, Says LeBron

“Definitely we’re not a team that likes to play from behind,” James said. “We’ve been in that position a lot this year, especially in the first quarter, but we still was able to get back into the game. But they did a good job. You know, you give credit where credit’s due.”

The Lakers will now play 11 of their next 12 games at home. But as good as that might seem, LeBron doesn’t want them to get too comfortable and just go through the motions:

“It could hurt us in the sense where you start to feel comfortable because you’re at home,” James said. “So we have to understand that, yes, just because we’re home, we really can’t relax now.”

Injuries Are Killing The Lakers, Says Anthony Davis

Anthony Davis also voiced his frustration about this tough stretch, talking about how their lack of depth and the countless injuries continue to hurt their chemistry and rotation:

“Rui [Hachimura] goes out. I just said that’s going to be our biggest downfall this year,” Davis said. “Not being able to stay healthy, especially coming off a back-to-back. You’re already missing Cam [Reddish], DLo.”

Davis talked about the team being smaller, which is kind of odd, considering they did have Christian Wood and Jaxson Hayes available in their loss to the New Orleans Pelicans:

“Obviously, Gabe [Vincent] is out for an extended period of time, but then Rui goes down,” he continued. “Now, our rotation is smaller. You lose another body as far as scoring, but yeah, I mean, defensively, we gave up a lot of threes.”

Lakers Need To Regroup

Even so, the Lakers cannot keep using the health excuse for their struggles. Austin Reaves acknowledges that as banged up as they are, everybody in the league has to deal with those issues:

“You want to win. And as a team, I believe that you know what our goal is to do is win. And you know, since the in-season tournament, we’ve been struggling. Health, you know injuries, sickness, you know we’ve kind of had some bad fortune there,” said Reaves. “But at the end of the day, it happens to everybody, and we got to look in the mirror and, you know, see what we can do to be better what I could do to be better, and just get better.”

Injuries have obviously taken a big toll on this team, but it doesn’t seem like they have the right personnel to be a legitimate NBA championship contender, even when healthy.