LOS ANGELES — It was meant as a rhetorical question, but the way LeBron James said it inferred that the Lakers don’t have an answer.

On Thursday night, James was in the middle of a rant about the kind of uncertainty that has now rocked most teams in the NBA, but the Lakers most of all.

“What is our starting lineup besides me and Russ and A.D.?” he asked, referring to Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis. “Or A.D. and Russ? Or me and Russ? You know, we’ve both been out. So, we don’t know.”

The Lakers (16-17) don’t know.

They have used 18 different starting lineups, the most of any team in the league, and they haven’t started any one group more than four times. The only team in the same neighborhood is Philadelphia, which has used 17 different lineups but has been able to play 10 games with its most frequent group. For reference: The Lakers had just 12 different starting lineups throughout the entire 2019-20 regular season, which ended with a championship.

It doesn’t explain all that ails the Lakers, but it does contextualize struggles like the ones they had against the San Antonio Spurs, who throttled them, 138-110, on Thursday night. The Spurs had just six turnovers all night, crisply passing in their system with the rock-solid knowledge of where open shooters would be in their scheme.

The Lakers were milling about in confusion, which is bound to happen when you’re doling out 21 minutes to Isaiah Thomas and 11 minutes to Jemerrio Jones, neither of whom was on the roster just a week and a half ago. There was iffy communication on closeouts and traps, or players looking at each other when the Spurs found another open 3-point shooter. Not coincidentally, San Antonio made 18 shots from behind the arc, which was 13 more than the Lakers.

A lot of teams have one or more players in the COVID-19 protocols right now; if they have a chance to beat up on the Lakers, they will.

“Teams are not coming in here to say, ‘Well, we hope you guys get better, and we’ll give you a game,’” center Dwight Howard said. “As you can see, every team is trying to whoop our ass.”

Thrust into the head coaching role for an undetermined stretch, assistant David Fizdale has been attempting to toe the line of holding the players accountable while being understanding of a roster with seven players who are either in the COVID-19 protocols or nursing long-term injuries. The team’s best defender, Anthony Davis, is out for at least the next month. But Fizdale seemed to relent on his players on Thursday night.

“They know I’m not giving them one out or one excuse, but there is a reality to a complex defensive system,” he said. “I was so impressed learning it, but it’s not easy. And you’re tied together, and it’s a string. And unfortunately, this is a part of the season where we’re getting punched while we’re trying to figure our rhythm, continuity, togetherness. We get hit with COVID and we lose a lot of stuff, a lot of rhythm, a lot of continuity.”

Not surprisingly, some of the most-played five-man lineups also happen to belong to the teams with the best records: Utah, Phoenix and Golden State have the five-man groups that have played the most minutes, with all three posting 341 minutes or more this season. They are, by and large, starting lineups with hugely positive net ratings, and groups that have played together not just this season, but last season as well.

To find the most-played Laker lineup, one must flip all the way to No. 90 among the NBA’s five-man listings: Westbrook, Davis, Carmelo Anthony, Avery Bradley and Talen Horton-Tucker have played 53 minutes together, posting a plus-11.8 net rating. James isn’t even in the most-played group, and two of those players are unavailable right now. The Big Three of James, Davis and Westbrook have only played 15 games together, which was certainly not the plan.

Predictably, the Lakers have been dogged by significant turnover issues, have lost their recent improvement on the defensive end, and lack any sense of rhythm or even the joy that comes from a group that is getting used to one another.

James said the goal going into the season was to simply get time together to get a feel for what lineups would look like. Oh, how foolish they were.

“We literally haven’t had an opportunity to log in anything: We don’t know,” he said. “We have no chemistry with any lineup for the simple fact that we literally haven’t logged enough minutes.”

There are other factors at play here, of course, with the Lakers’ relative age and skillsets and Westbrook’s somewhat clunky fit with his teammates. But even in games when Westbrook and James go off for 66 combined points like they did Thursday, the Lakers, as they are right now, can’t compete with a lower-tier Western Conference team that at least has continuity.

Losing is adding to the fatigue the team is feeling as the coronavirus cuts a path through the roster. The Lakers can’t help but feel that the players who gain the most momentum are the next to get trapped in the protocols: Horton-Tucker, who got stuck after a breakout from a slump; Austin Reaves who got sick after hitting a game-winning shot in Dallas; Trevor Ariza, who had just started the season 5 for 5.

James’ body language throughout Thursday night was that of a man who knows he has a losing hand at the poker table. There was a third-quarter play when Howard, recently returned from protocols, fouled Derrick White at the rim. James threw his hands in the air, clearly frustrated that Howard hadn’t kept his own arms up with verticality, then crouched near the Lakers’ sideline, head slumped.

At one point he was upset that he couldn’t get on the court. Now he feels lonely out there.

“It’s literally a crapshoot every single time you take a test at this point – on who is negative and who is positive,” he said. “You just got to see who is available and go from there.”

The churn will continue: ESPN reported that the Lakers intend to sign Darren Collison, a point guard who hasn’t played in the NBA in the last two years, as well as L.A. native and former lottery pick Stanley Johnson, who played for South Bay earlier this season. Both will come in on 10-day hardship contracts, which is a sign that the Lakers are not nearly out of the woods when it comes to their depth issues. They still haven’t gotten Head coach Frank Vogel cleared for Christmas Day, when they’ll take on the similarly patchy Brooklyn Nets, who are still without All-Star Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge among others.

James called it “exciting” and “an honor” to play on Christmas Day again. But he didn’t hide the naked truth, either – not that he could if he wanted to.

“Is it going to be one of the premier games I’m accustomed to playing in on Christmas? No,” he said. “So many guys are out. This whole protocol thing has gotten the worst of a lot of teams in our league right now. So, it won’t be as star-studded as (some of the games) I’ve been in.”

— Kyle Goon

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