After another frustrating loss on the road on Sunday night, the Los Angeles Lakers are now 17-17 on the season, which is not where they want to be at this point in the regular season.

The Lakers lost to the New Orleans Pelicans on New Year’s Eve in large part because they couldn’t defend the three-point line. Veteran guard C.J. McCollum smashed the Lakers from deep. McCollum only scored 22 points, but he made six three-pointers that helped New Orleans beаt Los Angeles.

Along with McCollum’s over 50% from beyond the arc, the Pelicans were also very hоt from long range. They finished the game hitting exactly 50% (17-of-35) from beyond the three-point line. If the Lakers keep letting up that many three-point shots, they won’t win many games. Davis knows this because he talked about his anger on Spectrum SportsNet after the game.

Davis said, “They were killing us on the glass.” “After that, Rui Hachimura leaves. I just said that would be our worst mistake this year. Being unable to stay healthy, especially after a back-to-back. You already miss Cam [Reddish] and DLo. Gabe Vincent will be out for a long time, but then Rui gets hurt. We are now rotating less. You lose another player who can score, but we did give up a lot of threes on defense. In the first half, they had 10. Of course, they made the guys we wаnted to shoot. You can’t do anything about it.

“I think we didn’t put in much effort or pay attention at the beginning.” If you look at C.J. [McCollum], a lot of his threes were bottom-heavy. It’s hard to deal with that.

Along with being unhappy with how the Lakers have played defense, Davis thinks that the team’s biggest problem this season has been staying fit. Rui Hachimura was just the latest player to get hurt and could be out for a while.

Hachimura leaving the game with a calf cramp was already bad news for the Lakers. They also had to play without Cam Reddish and D’Angelo Russell, which hurt them on both ends of the court.

With the second part of the season coming up soon, only time will tell if the Lakers can get fit and get back on track to make a strong run.