Atlanta Hawks

Hawks-Lakers Preview (Jan 07, 2018)

Published Jan. 6, 2018 10:33 p.m. ET

The Atlanta Hawks are the only NBA team the Los Angeles Lakers did not lose to last season, and the Lakers will need to beat the Hawks at Staples Center on Sunday evening to avoid matching their longest losing streak in franchise history.

Los Angeles (11-27) lost its ninth straight game 108-94 to the visiting Charlotte Hornets on Friday night. Six of its past seven losses have come by double-digit margins.

The Lakers have reached double figures in consecutive losses just twice in team history. They ended the 1993-94 season with 10 straight defeats under Magic Johnson, capping his short tenure as head coach, and matched that streak in January of 2016, Kobe Bryant's final season in Los Angeles.

"It's not easy, but we're going to fight our way through it," Lakers coach Luke Walton said to reporters after the latest loss. "The biggest difference, right now and the past two weeks, has been our defense."

Los Angeles beat Atlanta twice in November of last season to help the Lakers end the month with a 10-10 record, but faded significantly in December and finished the 2016-17 season with a 26-56 record.

The last time the Lakers were at .500 this season was when they beat the Memphis Grizzlies on Nov. 5 to improve to 5-5. Their downturn picked up momentum later that month, when they lost all four games on a road trip that included stops against the three other California teams.

"Early in the year, if we had off-shooting nights, like we've had a lot of, we were still right in ball games, because we were defending our tails off," Walton said. "The biggest thing we need to get back to is playing defense like that."

The Hawks (10-28) are struggling with the same rebuilding process as the Lakers, and Atlanta has lost two in a row to remain the only NBA team with a worse record than Los Angeles this season.

Dennis Schroder leads Atlanta in scoring (19.6) and assists (6.7), but even he is struggling of late, shooting 12 of 31 from the floor in the past two games combined with as many turnovers (nine) as assists.

Second-leading scorer Taurean Prince is 6 of 25 from the field in the past two games.

Atlanta's 110-89 loss at the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night was its second-largest margin of defeat of the season. A bright side was that coach Mike Budenholzer got a longer look at players further down his bench.

"You don't want to be in that situation, but you have to find a way to take advantage of all 48 (minutes)," he told reporters after the game.

Mike Muscala played the final 8:16, his first playing time with the Hawks since injuring his ankle on Nov. 3, and the backup power forward grabbed two rebounds and missed his only field-goal attempt.

Luke Babbitt fell out of the rotation and didn't appear in six straight games before playing eight minutes against Portland. He played up front with Muscala after spending most of his NBA career at small forward, and Budenholzer told reporters after the game he liked the look and may go back to it again.

Tyler Dorsey reached double figures in minutes for the third time this season (11), and the rookie shooting guard scored eight points off the bench. Dorsey is a Los Angeles native making his first return to the city as a pro.