The Lakers are sitting pretty as the number one seed in the Western Conference right now, but everything isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Los Angeles.
Their loss on Wednesday night to the Oklahoma City Thunder put a giant spotlight on their biggest weakness — their shooting. They shot a terrible 5-37 from 3-point range in the 105-86 loss.
That’s an extremely terrible shooting night for any team in the NBA, but unfortunately for the Lakers that’s been the norm during their stay in the NBA’s bubble.
Overall, they’ve shot the ball extremely poorly and it’s spreading throughout the rest of their offense.
Yes, they’re only three games in. No, this isn’t enough to say they can’t win an NBA championship. But this is absolutely a cause for concern. Here’s why.
This is closer to the norm than not for the Lakers
There are two things that make a team great at shooting threes — volume and percentage.
Some teams (looking at you, Rockets) hoist up so many threes that, if they just get to the league average mark of 36% or even hit slightly below it, it’s a big plus for their offense.
Other teams don’t shoot as many in volume, but they’re so good at making them that it ends up being the same plus. The Miami Heat (38% from 3-point range) are a perfect example of this.
The Lakers don’t fall into either category. They don’t take a lot and they don’t make a lot, relatively speaking. Here’s where they stand:
- 23rd in 3-point makes with 11 per game
- 22nd in 3-point attempts at 31.6 per game
- 23rd in 3-point percentage at 34.8% per game.
They’re just not a very good shooting team. That’s what they’ve been all year. Here’s the problem, though.
In the bubble, they’ve gotten worse
The sample is extremely small, but the Lakers are easily the worst shooting team in the NBA’s bubble.
They only make 23% of their threes which is good for dead last. However, they’re shooting them a bit more at 34 attempts per game so far. None of that is good.
On top of that, they lost one of their best 3-point shooters this season in Avery Bradley who hit 36% of his threes. His replacements in Dion Waiters and J.R. Smith are shooting a combined 3-23 from deep and Danny Green can’t hit the broad side of a barn right now.
Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Anthony Davis are the only Lakers shooting above 30% from deep right now with Kuzma (46.7%) being the best of them.
Their defense can’t fix this one
The Lakers still have a top three defense in the league, but they’re going to need more to get out of this jam. A great defense can overcome a mediocre offense — not an awful one.
Their 95.5 offensive rating is dead last in the league by far. For context, it’s just about seven points worse than the winless Washington Wizards at 102.4. And they don’t have Bradley Beal or Davis Bertans, who are their two best players.
Now, it’s early. And things can change. LeBron James will play better. Danny Green and J.R. Smith will start hitting.
But right now? That’s straight up awful and the Lakers should be better than that. Period.
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