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Dave McMenamin, ESPN Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES — Whatever hope the Los Angeles Lakers had that returning to their home arena would be just what the team needed to spring back to life was dashed Friday night sometime around the Memphis Grizzlies‘ 20th 3-pointer midway through the fourth quarter.
After ending the third quarter with the score tied, Memphis outscored L.A. by 14 in the fourth and won 127-113 to hand the Lakers their fourth straight loss.
The Lakers are now 17-19 — 11th in the Western Conference and out of even play-in tournament contention — less than a month after winning the league’s inaugural in-season tournament.
For LeBron James, who led all scorers with 32 points but went just 2-for-6 from the foul line and committed three turnovers in the fourth, there was no sugarcoating it.
“I mean, we just suck right now,” James said.
Their struggles have gone on for weeks, going just 3-10 overall since their tournament championship in Las Vegas.
It was a championship that, in retrospect, might have been given too much weight in evaluating L.A.’s season, considering it was ultimately captured with two wins over the New Orleans Pelicans and Indiana Pacers to seal it.
“That was just two games,” James said. “It’s a small sample. Everyone is getting so cracked up about Vegas and keep bringing up Vegas. It was two games. We took care of that business. It was the in-season tournament, we played it, we won it. But that was literally just two games.”
While James didn’t want to focus on those tourney wins, Lakers coach Darvin Ham – who told reporters before the game that he has the backing of Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka — said there has been too much attention being paid to the recent losses.
“I’m tired of people living and dying with every single game we play,” Ham said. “It’s ludicrous, actually. It’s like, come on, man, this is a marathon. And we hit a tough stretch. It’s the same team. … We played some high-level games a little while ago, and we just got to get back to that.
“We got to keep the fight going. We cannot lose our fight.”
Memphis took the fight to the Lakers, with four players scoring 20 or more points, led by Jaren Jackson Jr.’s 31. The Grizzlies also shot 23-for-45 (51.1%) on 3-pointers, setting a season high.
Memphis came into the night ranked 11th in 3-pointers made per game with 12.9 and last in team 3-point percentage (33.4%).
“They’re NBA players,” James said of the Grizzlies’ 3-point explosion. “They work on their craft, too. It seems to happen a lot versus us, where the percentages go the other way. We had our game plan and how we wanted to execute that, and I thought we did that as well as we could. And they made us pay.”
After spending most of December on the road, January provided a home-heavy schedule for the Lakers, with 11 of their first 12 games this month being played at Crypto.com Arena.
They’re 0-2 thus far, with a date with the LA Clippers, winners of 14 of their past 16 games, looming on Sunday.
Anthony Davis preached the importance of the Lakers looking inward as individuals in order to be able to bring their best to the group as the team tries to get back on track.
“We still have a lot of basketball left,” Davis said. “But we’re trending in the wrong direction right now. And the last thing we need, especially when guys are out, is to separate and fall apart. So we got to stay together, for sure, and figure it out. We can’t be in our feelings. We can’t be complaining or whatever. We can’t take anything personal.
“We have to look individually, myself, everyone in the locker room, the coaching staff, look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out what we can do individually better to help the team be better. And I think then we can come out and flip things around.”