LeBron James, Anthony Davis don't hold back following Lakers' latest loss

The Lakers dropped their fourth straight game on Friday after losing to the Grizzlies, and Los Angeles is now 17-19, one game out of a play-in tournament spot at No. 11 in the conference. This comes off the heels of winning the NBA’s in-season tournament last month.

“We just suck right now,” LeBron James said after the game, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin.

Since winning the in-season tournament in Las Vegas, the Lakers have gone 3-10. However, James downplayed the weight that carried in evaluating the Lakers’ season in full.

“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.”

The Lakers’ frustrations have boiled over, with reports surfacing over the past week about coach Darvin Ham‘s disconnect with the locker room. Ham said too much emphasis has been placed on Los Angeles’s 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.”

The Lakers are without rotation players in D’Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura and Gabe Vincent, further complicating their struggles ahead of the trade deadline. However, players have continually refused to use injuries as an excuse.

“We still have a lot of basketball left,” Anthony 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.“