The Los Angeles Lakers dropped 0-2 on the season after losing to the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday night. Despite the rather nightmare start to the 2022-23 campaign, though, Lonnie Walker IV is optimistic they will be able to turn things around soon.

But where exactly is Walker getting that confidence?

Well, to be fair, the Lakers played better against the Clippers compared to their NBA Opening Night showdown with the Golden State Warriors. While offense, particularly 3-point shooting, remains a big problem for the Purple and Gold, they did play with more tenacity on the defensive end–allowing them to limit their LA rivals to just 103 points.

According to Walker–who had a game-high 26 points in the contest–he feels like they are “right there” and really close to getting  a good grasp on how to play alongside each other. His teammates seem to feel the same way as him, as he noted “there was a bit of optimism in the locker room” despite the defeat.

“We’ve only been playing together for a few weeks and our last two teams that we played against have been playing together for the last 4-5 years. So that speaks a lot of volume to how we’ve been playing. We just got to continue to stack the days and trust in the system, trust in our teammates and play the way we play,” Walker said, via Lakers Nation.

A lot of Lakers fans are already panicking after the back-to-back losses, and it's hard to blame them. After all, bowing down to two contenders shows that LeBron James and co. are nowhere near to playing for the title–at least not right now.

But as Lonnie Walker IV said, there might still be some hope for the Lakers. Of course it remains to be seen if they will ever be able to click as a team. As every NBA fan knows, their attempt with Russell Westbrook failed horribly last year.

LA fans are surely hoping that this year would be different. In order to see that, however, they will have to wait for a few more games.