LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Lakers headed into their matchup with the L.A. Clippers on Friday night at the Staples Center hoping to get back on track after losing at the buzzer a day earlier against the Sacramento Kings.

Luke Walton's squad aimed to bounce back without LeBron James, Rajon Rondo, or JaVale McGee for the second straight game, but this time it would be on their home floor. Although the team played well without three of their best players on Thursday, Friday's performance was sloppy with one stretch in the game sticking out among the rest for all the wrong reasons.

The Clippers went on a 22-0 run in this game against their division rivals in which the Lakers had no answer for Lou Williams and company. The ugly stretch was a hot topic of discussion after the game with point guard Lonzo Ball making it abundantly clear that these kinds of things must not happen.

“We've got to stay together no matter if it's going good or going bad,” Ball said. “We got to stay together. Teams are going to go on runs. It happens, but 22-0 run should never happen.”

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Tyson Chandler also chimed in on the 22-0 run that seems to have defined this game.

“I think they did a better job of just buckling down; they made the game scrappy,” Chandler said of the Clippers' run. “They put in a unit that started switching off on us. [They were] just a little bit more aggressive than us, and they were able to get out with the lead.”

There's no question this Lakers team is a different beast with LeBron leading the way, and that was never more apparent than on Friday. With no clear timetable of how long James will be out while dealing with the groin injury, the Lakers will have some soul searching to do as they try to stay afloat in the playoff picture in the Western Conference.

As a result of dropping the last two games, Walton's team is sitting at 20-16 and could very easily lose their way with James on the shelf.