For the most part, the Los Angeles Lakers have hung tough since LeBron James sprained his ankle on March 20.

They've gone 7-11 over the 18 games, all of which besides the last two — both losses to the Dallas Mavericks — came without Anthony Davis.

There have been silver linings during this undermanned stretch. The Lakers have shot the ball much better from 3 — a welcome trend after an ice-cold winter. They rank seventh in assist percentage and, in the past two weeks, have drastically cut down turnovers.

Most impressively, the L.A. defense has remained stout without their vocal leader (James) and their most dominant force (Davis). Instead, L.A.'s individual talent, coaching, and prideful effort maintained a top-four defensive rating entering the Dallas series.

On Saturday, they flexed that defensive muscle for the first half, as Vogel's defense effectively flustered Luka Doncic with a series of traps and varied coverages. L.A. held Dallas to 39.5% shooting in the first half and built a 12-point lead.

In the second half, the Mavs powered through and the Lakers' offense sputtered. Dallas shot 60% in the third quarter and held the Lakers to 35 second-half points on 30.0% shooting, including 14 in the final period.

“Offensively, we’ve got to figure some things out,” Kuzma said.

The Mavs erased a 17-point deficit, earning a 108-93 win and two-game sweep at American Airlines Center capped off by a dash of unsolvable Luka Magic.

The loss dropped the No. 5-seeded Lakers to 35-25, 1.5 games up on the Mavs (33-26) and 2.5 games up on the Portland Trail Blazers (32-27), who currently occupy the No. 7 seed.

The Lakers are 0-2 since Davis returned and have lost three straight games overall.

Davis has been up-and-down in two outings. He followed up a positive but limited return on Thursday (17 minutes) with a bigger workload on Saturday, but his offense — particularly his jumper — has yet to find a groove. In 28 minutes, AD shot 5-of-19 from the field, 0-of-6 from downtown, and 7-of-8 from the line. He tallied three boards and three assists.

“He looked a little more like himself,” Kuzma said. “But still, there’s rust. … At the end of the day, it's Anthony Davis.”

Davis isn't worried about his rhythm. Afterward, he said his body felt good, but his underworked legs led to a slew of short jumpers.

“I think I’m getting to the shots; everything is just short. All the 3s I took, I liked. All the (midrange) I took, I liked. The good thing about it, they all felt good. … They were all just short, which comes from the legs. That’s something that’s easily fixable with just more minutes.”

Perhaps more than any other game over the past month, this one spotlighted the glaring absence of LeBron James, excluding his contributions from the Lakers sideline.

The Lakers need The King back on the hardwood for a plethora of reasons (though they are prudent to play it safe). For one — beyond all the inherent superlatives that come with “LeBron James Playing Basketball” — his impending return comes at an especially crucial moment on the calendar.

The Lakers have 12 games left in the regular season. They're working Davis back into the mix and have a new starting center (Andre Drummond) with whom James has never played outside of All-Star Games and undisclosed summer scrimmages.

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Even more pressing: the Lakers need to score points.

Until Davis's injury on Valentine's Day, the Lakers ranked 10th in offensive rating. For the next month-ish sans Davis, the Lakers ranked 15th.

Since March 21, entering Saturday (per NBA.com), the Lakers ranked 29th in offensive efficiency, 26th in field goal percentage (44.4), and 27th in true shooting percentage.

Before James went down, L.A. averaged 111.9 points per game. They're down to 103.7 (29th) since.

Why the Lakers have struggled is not a mystery. James, the conductor, orchestrates more activity than anyone not directly involved in the action can fathom. AD's ability to draw double-teams is the vital fulcrum around which the Lakers orbit.

Or, as Kuzma put it, regarding the team's shortcomings: “We're missing our two best players.”

Fair enough. But the Lakers are going to need to pull out a few more wins to secure a solid playoff spot. Once there, they'll need their captain to steer their offense back into form and help close out games. (It's hard to envision the Lakers being outscored 29-14 in a fourth quarter, as they were in Dallas, with James running the show.)

Sure, the Lakers can use their first-round series to hone chemistry and flip the switch — as they've done in the past — but their less-than-ideal seeding won't present them with a cakewalk matchup.

L.A. has cohesion kinks to work out, too. Schröder has played a mere 25 games with Davis, while the potentially dominant James-Davis-Drummond frontcourt will have almost zero practice time to jell.

“I think when Bron comes back, we're going to have a conversation as a team. Because our chemistry, like AD said, off the court is great. But on the court, we just got to turn it up some more,” Schröder said.

“You've got to try and figure it out on the fly, which we're going to have to do,” Davis acknowledged.

The schedule won't help. Beginning May 3, the Lakers will face the Denver Nuggets, a road back-to-back vs. the Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers, then matchups with the Phoenix Suns (May 9) and New York Knicks (May 11). L.A. will play nine games in 16 days to start the month, including four B2Bs.

Davis even referred to upcoming meetings with the Orlando Magic and Washington Wizards as “must-wins.”

If the LeBron-less Lakers keep scoring at a bottom-feeding rate, every game poses a challenge, regardless of the competition.

“We just gotta get everybody back,” Schröder said. “I heard LeBron is close. We gotta use how many games we got left to get the chemistry right, get on the same page. Even some games in the playoffs, and then we’ll be fine. … We’ve gotta have ‘next man up' mentality until the best player in the world comes back and helps us get dubs.”