LOS ANGELES — Relief was felt.
Joy was shared.
With a 106-103 victory over the Clippers to end their four-game losing streak, the Lakers experienced something rare over the last few weeks: a celebratory locker room rather than one dealing with the anguish of defeat.
But the joy and relief came cautiously.
It was just the Lakers’ fourth win in the 14 games since they defeated the Indiana Pacers to win the In-Season Tournament title on Dec. 9 – and the first victory of this ongoing five-game homestand. They’re still under .500, with an 18-19 regular-season record.
Just like they tried not to get too low after their recent losses, they also tried not to get too high after Sunday’s victory, even with it being over their Crypto.com Arena co-tenant.
“It doesn’t fix everything, obviously, but it helps,” LeBron James said. “But we gotta still learn from the wins more than we learn from losses. Because when you lose, you’re able to look at like, ‘OK, this is why we lost, we have to do this better. We have to do this.’ And then when you win, the first human instinct to do is, ‘Ah, we won. OK.’
“But, no. We have to learn from the mistakes we had [Sunday], which we had too many still. So we have to learn from this [Monday].”
Even with the victory coming against one of the top teams in the Western Conference, there were plenty of areas where the Lakers could have performed better: defensive rebounding and ball security being among them.
There’s also an awareness that picking up a key victory in one game doesn’t mean success will come in immediate future games.
Their Dec. 13 road win against the San Antonio Spurs was followed by a four-game losing streak. Their Dec. 23 victory over the Thunder in Oklahoma City to end that losing streak came before an 11-point loss to the Boston Celtics on Christmas Day.
“We can’t be comfortable, we can’t be too comfortable,” Coach Darvin Ham said. “We still got a lot of work to do. This was a huge, huge win against an elite ballclub. But it shows us what we can do once band together and everyone just really focuses in on the job they have to do individually and collectively. All of us, players, coaches, performance team, everybody.
“This is something I hope will continue to spill on to the next several games all the way until the end of the season, this type of performance. Win or lose, you can live with yourself with these types of performances and the way we competed end to end, the resilience. Got real noisy, but take a little deep breath.”
TWO-WAY SIGNING
Free agent Skylar Mays reportedly agreed to a two-way contract with the Lakers, Mays’ agent told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Mays, a 6-foot-3 guard who was a second-round pick out of LSU for the Atlanta Hawks in 2020, has played for the Hawks and Portland Trail Blazers, averaging 4.9 points and two assists in 88 games.
He had a 15-point, 12-assist double-double and 15 points and eight assists in the two games he played against the Lakers earlier this season.