There were many things that went wrong for the Lakers against the Kings, but LeBron James thinks early foul trouble to Anthony Davis was a big turning point.

When a team loses a game in the manner the Lakers did on Wednesday, a lot of things have to go wrong and in a hurry. Double-digit leads don’t become double-digit deficits inside one quarter without a total collapse.

That being said, there are still things that will have a bigger impact on the loss than others and LeBron James pointed to what he felt was a big one.

With 1:27 left in the first quarter, Anthony Davis picked up his second foul and went to the bench with the Lakers up 37-19. When he returned at the eight-minute mark of the second quarter, the lead was down to seven points and the surging Kings had the lead barely three minutes later.

After allowing 19 points in the opening 9:33, the Lakers allowed 31 points in the next 7:33 minutes. Defensively, a lot went wrong and LeBron pointed to that second foul AD picked up in the first quarter as the turning point.

“It evaporated when AD picked up his second (foul),” LeBron said of the defense. “Plain and simple. When you have someone like that who controls so much of our defense, when he picked up his second in the first quarter and we had to make a sub, our defense kind of just fluttered after that.”

While this isn’t a shot at AD, it is worth noting that he has found himself in foul trouble a number of times in recent games, a disconcerting trend. It happened against the Spurs and Clippers in recent weeks, but the Lakers came away with wins in those games.

This time around, it came back to bite the Lakers in one of the biggest games of the season.

“It was questionable foul calls on me,” Davis said when asked about LeBron’s comments. “Tried to play in foul trouble, didn’t want to pick up any cheap ones. When I’m not on the floor, our defense is a different team.”

The foul trouble existed throughout the game and Davis’ fourth foul served as, effectively, a dagger for the Lakers later on in the game. With the Lakers down 79-66 relatively early in the third quarter, Davis was called for his fourth foul on an and-one from Fox.

Forced to the bench, the Lakers’ defense again evaporated and the lead moved back over 20 points once again. Given the benefit of hindsight, head coach Darvin Ham said he would have challenged that fourth foul.

“That’s on me, too. I probably should have challenged when they called his fourth foul,” Ham said. “Everybody looking at the bench and they’re looking at the replay, it can be 50-50. Next time, I’ll definitely just say ‘To hell with it’ and do it. That’s definitely on me.”

There’s nothing the Lakers can do about the things that went wrong against the Kings. But they should take notes of how things happened and what they need to do to improve. At the top of that list is foul trouble for AD, both in his avoiding it and the Lakers finding better ways to navigate it.