The Los Angeles Lakers were unable to resurrect LeBron James on Easter Sunday, and fell to their Staples Center co-tenant, the Los Angeles Clippers, 104-86.

Truthfully, the short-handed Lakers — playing without Andre Drummond, nursing a toenail injury — didn’t have a chance against a motivated Clippers team following two straight losses.

Rajon Rondo made his Clips debut, Serge Ibaka donned this piece of “art”, and the Lakers missed an opportunity to surpass their rival in the standings. Oh, well. Clips fans (all 78 of them!) can rejoice in the rout and taking the Staples season series.

Here are five other takeaways from a pseudo-“Battle for L.A.” that really wasn’t much of a fight.

1) The Clippers are not the Sacramento Kings

On Friday, the Lakers played their best game since James went down, a 115-94 victory in Sacramento. Afterward, Frank Vogel and select players credited the team's collective defensive effort and ball-movement.

Another key factor: they played the Kings, who have the worst defense in basketball.

Against the Clippers, finding a basket was harder than a well-hidden Easter egg. Tyronn Lue's group disrupted the Lakers' rhythm and exploited their lack of All-Star caliber bucket-getters. Even late in the second half, the Clippers were giving maximal effort on D.

“Credit the Clippers’ defense,” Vogel said in his postgame Zoom. “They got up into us and we didn’t handle their pressure well enough at all. And when we did, we had a tough shooting night. A tough shooting at the rim, missed nine layups, 21 shots in the paint and a tough shooting night at the 3-point line as well.”

The Lakers tallied a season-low in assists (16) against 18 turnovers. In general, they didn't “read” the defense well — a constant talking point of Vogel. After a rare practice on Monday, Vogel said the team's film study has been focused on offensive fundamentals and decision-making in recent days.

The Lakers' 86 points on Sunday marked their lowest output since August, and their 55 through three frames was their lowest since 2017.

“In Sacramento, we had a little bit more flow,” Talen Horton-Tucker said. “The NBA is a make-or-miss league. That was the biggest difference… it comes down to making shots and executing.”

The Lakers shot 40% from the field, and only one starter hit double-figures (Marc Gasol, 11 points). It was the fifth time in the past nine games that the Lakers have failed to reach 100 points. As The Athletic's Jovan Buha noted, the offense was already sputtering since Davis got hurt, and it's plummeted into the abyss sans James.

“I think we didn’t do a good enough job of playing togetherness basketball on the offensive end,” Kuzma assessed. “That was probably the number one thing that probably stood out from Sacramento to the Clippers. I think for us during this time, if we’re going to have a shot to win games, we have to play and trust the next guy on our team. And I don’t think that was the case.”

“In the Sacramento game, we did a great job of getting off the ball and hitting the open guy. And tonight, I don’t think we had too many of those drive-and-kick 3 opportunities that you saw in that Sacramento games. That was the difference.”

Gasol echoed those sentiments after the Lakers lost.

“I think that doing everything a little better and sacrificing for your teammates — and by sacrificing, it’s cutting, moving, burning the extra calorie for somebody else.”

Vogel largely chalked up the Lakers' struggles to the opponent.

“I think our guys tried to play the right way. They took us out with a lot of our action with a great defensive performance,” he said Monday.

Both sides are correct. The Lakers need to move the ball better as they scrap for buckets without James and Davis, but their current struggles are not a long-term concern.

The Lakers whip the ball around when fully healthy. In fact, they tend to over-pass out of good looks. As Harrison Faigen noted, they're doing even more of it, and with less success, without James.

https://twitter.com/hmfaigen/status/1379139671247122432

“I think where we’re at, we just have to play the right way on the offensive end,” Kuzma said. “Offensively, we’ve got to find ways to play together and put points on the board. You can’t win games scoring in the 80s and 90s. We’ve got to figure out ways to incorporate everyone and everyone get the ball, touch it, have opportunities to score.”

2) What about threes for the Lakers?

On the other hand, perimeter shooting remains a real issue. For the second straight season — save for the bubble playoffs — the Lakers have shot below-average from deep, and ice-cold for over two months.

On Sunday, the Lakers were once again plagued by shooting woes. They shot 7-of-23, and Gasol — who probably won’t be in the rotation going forward — was 3-of-3.

Gasol (36.6%), Kuzma (35.8%), Dennis Schröder (32.7%) and Wesley Matthews (34.1%) have been mostly unreliable, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (39.7%) and Alex Caruso (40%) have sharply cooled after hot starts. Horton-Tucker is mired in a 3-for-23 stretch.

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The Lakers rank 24th in 3-point percentage and 27th in threes per game. Alarmingly, they rank second-to-last in percentage on open threes.

Without James and Davis, it's especially vital that they create and knock down threes (Schröder's eight dimes on Sunday is promising). Rob Pelinka can seek upgrades on the buyout market, but that won’t solve everything.

3) Silver linings playbook?

Once again, the Lakers played good enough defense to win on Sunday.

Even without their fulcrums, the defense has remained sturdy, if not dominant. L.A. ranks fourth in defensive efficiency since LeBron went down, for which Vogel and his coaching staff deserve a healthy dose of credit.

“Trying to find something positive out of this stretch is from a defensive standpoint,” Kuzma said. “I think we’ve done a solid job on that end. Maybe not the No. 1 defense, but we’ve held a few opponents to under 100 defensive rating. That’s something that will carry out. I think that’s the positive out of this.”

As shaky as the product has been since James sprained his ankle on March 20, the Lakers have done just enough to tread water. They’ve beaten their three weakest opponents: the league's two lowest scoring offenses (Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic) and the worst defense (Sacramento).

But, as Sunday showed, playing playoff-caliber competition is a tough ask for this B-Squad. Inconveniently, the Lakers start a brutal stretch of schedule this week. They have a 5-game East Coast swing against stiff competition, followed by a slew of tough matchups before another road trip and a May loaded with back-to-backs.

“It’s just one game at a time,” Vogel said. “We gotta beat the Raptors. That’s what it comes down to. We’ll do our work, we’ll compete and see what happened in this game, break down the film, improve from it and put together a plan to beat the Raptors. Take it one game at a time.”