Helene Elliott

There’s no bigger insult in hockey than to be accused of being selfish. Putting personal interests ahead of the good of the group goes against the culture of the sport, contradicting the unwritten code that success is built with a united front and can’t come from a bunch of self-absorbed individuals who happen to wear the same uniform. That team-first ethic is one of the beautiful aspects of a sometimes brutal sport. So it had the impact of a booming slap shot off the glass when Kings defenseman…

While the Lakers continue to flutter around .500, while fans rip coach Darvin Ham’s lineups and rotations and demand his head — or a season-saving trade, or both — the Clippers quietly and smoothly keep winning. Once past the difficulties of adjusting to James Harden’s early-season arrival, they’ve been content to let the drama simmer and headlines erupt at the other end of the hallway at Crypto.com Arena. Their 127-116 victory over the Lakers on Tuesday, led by Kawhi Leonard’s 25-point, 11-rebo…

His posture was so familiar. The uniform, not so much. As the national anthem played Saturday before the Kings and New York Rangers faced off at Crypto.com Arena, Jonathan Quick stood, bent over, his body angled toward the row of seven retired Kings jerseys displayed at one end of the ice. Someday, a version of the No. 32 he wore for parts of 16 Kings seasons will join that group. He has earned his own row, really, for being the backbone of their two Stanley Cup championships, the most valuable…

A season that began with great expectations dissolved into a struggle to stay afloat as the Kings hit the halfway mark. They had more reason to look nervously in the rear-view mirror at the teams gaining on them than to look optimistically ahead toward the top of the Pacific Division, which is where they thought they’d be after they acquired Pierre-Luc Dubois and his eight-year, $68 million contract in an effort to counter their rivals’ superior depth and size. General manager Rob Blake’s answer…

Always happy to share the credit in good times, Anthony Davis insisted on keeping the blame to himself when the Lakers lost at Utah on Saturday. Everyone but him did their part to step up in the absence of LeBron James, he said that night, putting the Lakers in an even tougher position than they were already facing as they battled to crack the top 10 in the West and at least get in position for a play-in berth. “We got to make a push,” he said, pointing out that their performance over the next f…

More alarming than the Kings squandering another late lead Thursday, more concerning than a losing streak that hit 0-3-4 when Florida’s Sam Reinhart scored on a slick backhander with 0.7 seconds left in overtime at Sunrise, Fla., was Kings captain Anze Kopitar’s postgame assessment of the team’s psyche. “Right now, it feels like we’ve got to play a perfect game,” he told Dennis Bernstein of TheFourthPeriod.com. “Good or pretty good is not good enough right now, so it’ll take a team effort to get…

So much for the possibility — the wild notion, as it turned out — that the Lakers might have gained some momentum from beating the Clippers and the Toronto Raptors in consecutive games, that those wins would become a springboard toward something better. To .500, at least, for a start. Facing what Lakers coach Darvin Ham called the Phoenix Suns’ “three-headed monster” of Bradley Beal, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant on Thursday, the Lakers again faced the harsh reality of their injury-shortened rot…

Before departing for their longest trip this season, the Kings put one last item into their collective memory, if not their largest suitcases: another blown lead that turned into their fourth straight game without a win, their longest drought this season. Their 4-3 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday extended their winless streak to four games and wasn’t an inspiring farewell for a trip that will take them to the halfway point of the season by the time they return to Crypto.com Ar…

If this wasn’t rock bottom for the Lakers, if a performance that was atrocious in nearly every significant way wasn’t the worst moment of a season that’s rapidly taking on the sour stench of frustration and the annoying whine of making excuses instead of making shots, it’s difficult to imagine how much worse this can be. But stick around. The answer could come as soon as Friday, when the now sub-.500 Lakers take a three-game losing streak into a home game against the Memphis Grizzlies, or on Sun…

Who was that masked man who stepped into the Lakers’ starting lineup Thursday and turned what might have been an uncomfortable situation into a forceful bounceback victory over Charlotte during a particularly difficult stretch of a still-difficult season? With Cam Reddish unavailable against the Hornets because of a sore groin, coach Darvin Ham coyly said before the game he’d play “someone” in Reddish’s place. That “someone” turned out to be Rui Hachimura, who’s still required to wear a face cov…