LOS ANGELES- The Los Angeles Lakers’ record (15-30) may not reflect it yet, but the team is putting in time to improve. The team appears to be putting in the extra hours required to install the types of habits winning teams need, something that isn’t always the case for young teams.

“The hardest thing is to get things to be habits,” said Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy of young teams. “To get it done in a drill one time is not really a challenge, it’s getting it to where they build habits and it shows up every night.”

The Lakers aren’t there yet, and as their loss to the Detroit Pistons showed, they won’t always get rewarded for their extra efforts with a victory. However, regardless of result or hour of the night, Lakers head coach Luke Walton is happy to see his players putting in extra work. With one qualifier.

“For me, the young guys [can] work out as much as they want until we start to see it affecting them,” Walton said.

Brandon Ingram has been happy to take advantage of that particular Walton policy, recently telling reporters he was playing basketball just about every waking hour. On Saturday night he proved it, showing up to work out at the Lakers’ practice facility after the Los Angeles D-Fenders games was over.

At 10 p.m.

On a Saturday night.

In Los Angeles.

It's basically 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in Los Angeles. Brandon Ingram is shooting in the Lakers practice facility pic.twitter.com/SgoPdo5ZjO — Harrison Faigen (@hmfaigen) January 15, 2017

"It's something I've been doing,” Ingram said of his late night workout. “It's nothing new, but I just continue to do things off the court away from the game."

“What he’s doing is impressive,” Walton said. “If Brandon looks like he’s hitting a wall then we kind of monitor it a little more closely, but until then we want the young guys in there every day, getting extra work in, getting extra shots up.”

One of the hardest things for inexperienced team to master isn’t getting extra shots up, but finding shots for others. The Lakers’ rank 23rd in the NBA in average passes per game (289.7) despite playing at the sixth-quickest pace of any team (100.24 possessions per game).

“That's got to be something that's a staple for us,” said Lakers guard Lou Williams. “It has to be something that we take pride in, and continue to share the ball and sling it around. With how this team is built, the more we share the ball, the better opportunity we give ourselves to win."

Walton has said he wants the Lakers to make 300 passes per game. They haven’t reached that average yet, and their other passing numbers aren’t much better. The Lakers rank 27th in assist to turnover ratio (1.37), and more indicative of them not making multiple quick-hitting passes is that they’re tied for third-to-last in the league in secondary assists (the pass leading to the assist) with just four per game.

The Lakers also rank 27th in potential assists, so this isn’t just due to players missing shots, although the team’s passing struggles have left them with the seventh-worst shooting percentage in the league on field goal attempts NBA.com classifies as spot-ups (37.5 percent).

"It definitely can improve right now. I don't want to keep using the 'young team' thing. At some point we've got to show growth, collectively as a group,” Williams said. “Some of these things — like sharing the ball — they should be second nature at this point."

Against Detroit the issue was on full display as the Lakers struggled to convert on a few hero-ball heaves towards the of the game while only producing 19 assists (lower than even their 26th-ranked season average of 20.6). Eventually the Pistons were able to capitalize enough times on the other end to deal the Lakers their fourth loss in a row.

“We all know we have a young team. Down the stretch, we’re playing teenagers, 20-year-olds and 21-year-olds, and this is a grown man’s league,” Walton said. “Are we good enough to win? Absolutely we are, but it takes making mistakes. There’s no formula that tells you exactly when it happens. Different people get it at different times. Some people never get it, some people get it right away.”

“I’m very confident as a group we’re going to get it and our young guys are going to figure it out because of this type of feeling and going through this,” Walton continued. “As a group, I think we’ll be a very tough team in the future, but we don’t know when we’re going to finally get over that hump and stay over it. We’ve gotten over it, and then we take a step or two back.”

To avoid having the same issues continue, the Lakers can only continue to attempt to build good habits and grow, which require copious amounts of time and patience. The extra time Ingram and his teammates are willing to put in allow Walton to possess both.

“I think that’s pretty normal with most young teams in the NBA,” Walton said. “But it can be frustrating at times going through it when you see the same type of thing happening multiple times.”

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise cited. All stats per NBA.com. and Basketball-Reference.com. Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.