Dave McMenamin's post on LA Lakers | Latest updates on Sulia

Dwight didn't appreciate me bringing up that LAL is actually closer to last place than it is to the playoffs ...

At 17-25, the Lakers are 4.0 games behind Portland (21-21) for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference playoff picture, but they're only 3.0 games ahead of the Hornets (14-28), who are 15th, a.k.a. last place, in the West. I asked Howard if it was wild to think about the Lakers being closer to the bottom than they are to qualifying for the postseason and he said this: "We’re four games out," Howard said after shootaround Friday. "Negativity just got to stop. I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m sick of hearing about all the negative stuff. It’s a big problem. Negativity is just not good. We got to bring some positivity to this situation, to everybody." Another reporter asked if that negativity was coming from the media or coming from the locker room. "I don't think we're being negative to each other and I'm not going to put that on you guys (in the media), I'm not saying you guys are negative," Howard said. "I'm just talking about negativity in general. That's like a dark cloud and the more you feed into the negativity, the bigger it gets. So, we have to change that and we have to believe. For all the fans and everybody who support the Lakers, believe. Yes, we're struggling. Yes, it's not the best time to be a Laker fan or a Laker player, but we will get out of it. There's a rainbow on the other end. We just got to make sure we get to it. I don't know if we got to eat some more Skittles or whatever it may be, but, we got to find a way."