After a discouraging defeat to the short-handed Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday, the Los Angeles Lakers — the preseason favorites to win the Western Conference — dropped back to .500 (13-13) 26 games into the 2021-22 season.

More alarmingly, as The Athletic's Bill Oram noted, they've only won two games against teams currently in the top-1o in the West, and have lost nine of 15 matchups with Western Conference opponents.

Los Angeles has tallied one comfortable win against a quality opponent — on Tuesday vs. the Boston Celtics — yet erased any positive developments from that game with their lackluster showing in Memphis.

In other words, the Lakers have scarcely resembled the championship contenders they expected to be.

Anthony Davis knows things have to change, and soon. It begins with a hard look in the mirror.

“We gotta play like we’re the underdogs,” he said after posting a forgettable 22 points in Memphis. “Which, now, at this point in the season, the way we’re playing, in a lot of games we probably are. We gotta be able to have that mindset and we gotta come in and be scrappy and be the more physical team and play like we’re the underdogs.”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4eyMtHUETPlGtzzbISEXc8?si=264f20f7de89411e

On Thursday, turnovers did the Lakers in. L.A. coughed it up 22 times, leading to 27 points for Memphis. However, as LeBron pointed out, the Lakers have largely cleaned up their act in that department over the past few weeks.

Davis, LeBron, and Frank Vogel cited the Lakers' broader issue: inconsistency.

“That’s our biggest problem right now: consistency,” AD said. “We come out certain games and don’t play how we’re supposed to play. Then, games like Boston, we come out and play great. We gotta be a more consistent team if we want to truly compete for a championship. It’s a mindset thing.”

“We understand that we’re going to get everybody’s best shot,” he said, repeating Russell Westbrook's postgame message. “We can’t control misses or makes, but we can control our effort defensively. We try to hold our hats on being a top-five defensive team, and we haven’t been. We’ve gotta change that quickly.”

Considering the Lakers' precarious place in the standings, AD knows there's no time to waste. They need to stack wins.

“I think we’re in sixth (in the West) right now,” he said. “We can’t keep taking a step forward and two steps backward. We gotta fix it quickly.”

Next up: their surprise arch-nemesis, the Oklahoma City Thunder, less than 24 hours from now.