The Los Angeles Lakers are in a rut in which they have dropped four of their past six games.
But things could get better on Tuesday night when the Washington Wizards pay them a visit.
Washington has dropped 10 games in a row and has won an NBA-low six this season. The Wizards last won on Jan. 1.
Washington also is in the third contest of a six-game road trip. Back-to-back losses to start the trip made the Wizards fall to 1-17 away from home.
It seems like good timing for the Lakers, who are four games above .500 but are experiencing consistency issues.
“Nothing is going to be easy for our team, and I figured that out very early in the season,” Los Angeles first-year coach JJ Redick said. “And that’s OK. We’re going to keep fighting. … We have 18 losses, so by the loss column, we’re sixth. We would like to be higher.
“I think there’s a couple games where we would all say we should have won. We haven’t had any of those games where you’re like, ‘Well, we kind of stole that one.’ We’re going to get a couple back at some point. We just got to continue to trust each other and we’ll be fine.”
Redick’s comments came after Sunday night’s 116-102 loss to the host Los Angeles Clippers. The Lakers trailed by as many as 26 points and scored fewer than 30 points in every quarter.
Lakers star forward LeBron James said afterward that the team has a thin margin of error due to its roster makeup. He said the team has to play at a high level to have a chance at winning.
“We don’t have a choice,” James said. “That’s the way our team is constructed and we have to — we have to play close-to-perfect basketball.”
James had 25 points and 11 assists against the Clippers but also committed five turnovers.
Anthony Davis had 16 points and 10 rebounds but made just 5 of 14 shots against the Clippers. He missed the previous game due to a foot injury.
The Wizards were routed 123-100 by the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, allowing 120 points or more for the sixth consecutive game.
Washington also wasn’t good on offense, as it shot 36 percent from the field and a wobbly 10 of 42 from 3-point range.
“We didn’t play well at all,” Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma said. “Offensively, felt like we were all over the place. … Defensively, we weren’t very good.”
Kuzma’s name is floating around in trade rumors with Washington struggling. Last season, he was nearly traded to the Dallas Mavericks before the trade deadline but told the organization that he preferred to stay put.
This time around, Kuzma is more open to being dealt.
“We’ll see how it goes, I don’t know,” Kuzma said. “I think last year was the right time (to stay) after signing the deal. That was kind of more of a last year thing.
“We haven’t had conversations, haven’t even talked about the deadline, haven’t talked about getting traded. This is really the first time I’m really talking about it.”
Kuzma, 29, is in his fourth season with the Wizards after spending his first four with the Lakers.
Kuzma was stellar for Washington the past two seasons with averages of 21.2 points in 2022-23 and a career-best 22.2 last season. But this season, he is averaging just 14.4 points and is posting career shooting lows of 42.5 percent from the field and 25.7 percent from 3-point range.
This is the first of two meetings between the teams this season. Los Angeles has won the past four matchups.
–Field Level Media
