The Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 NBA Championship behind the leadership of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. But since that amazing championship run, fans haven’t really seen the same level of performances from the Purple and Gold over the last two seasons.
In 2021, the Lakers were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs and then in 2022, they couldn’t even qualify for the play-in tournament. There are many things which went wrong for the Lakers, but not having good 3-point shooters was arguably their biggest flaw.
In today’s era, most teams try to surround their star players with several shooters to ensure there’s always a looming scoring threat at all times. Unfortunately, the Lakers weren’t a huge threat last season from deep and it doesn’t seem like that they have changed a lot ahead of the new season.
The Los Angeles Lakers Still Need A Few 3-Point Shooters
With the 2022-23 NBA season right around the corner, the Lakers have pretty much finalized their squad for the start of the season. They will be relying on their Big 3 of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook to lead the team to glory.
They may have added a few new role players to the roster, which has helped them to improve their defense, but the organization is yet to add good shooters. It is evident when we take a look at the 3PT% of the top players currently on the roster.
1. Kendrick Nunn – 38.1% (2020-21 NBA Season)*
2. LeBron James – 35.9%
3. Dennis Schroder – 34.4%
4. Patrick Beverley – 34.3%
5. Juan Toscano-Anderson – 32.2%
6. Austin Reaves – 31.7%
7. Lonnie Walker IV – 31.4%
8. Russell Westbrook – 29.8%
9. Thomas Bryant – 28.6%
10. Anthony Davis – 18.6%
The list depicts the 3PT% of all players from the 2021-22 NBA season, apart from Kendrick Nunn. Nunn was sidelined for the entire last season so we have used his stats from the 2020-21 NBA season.
Anyway, looking at these numbers it is abundantly clear that shooting from deep is not one of the strongest suits of the Lakers. They need to add a few more players to improve that aspect. One such player is Buddy Hield, who has been linked to the Lakers throughout the summer. The franchise is yet to make an offer which will make the Indiana Pacers to accept the deal.
Stats via Basketball Reference.
