3-point skill, the Lakers’ Achilles heel

Win streaks without showing a high level of 3-point skill: yes, it’s still possible. Proof with the Lakers right now, 2. in the West with 12 wins in 16 games, while behind the arc is a very uninspired team.

JJ Redick did not deprive himself to tell his players at the end of a success on the wire achieved in Utah : « We are literally one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA right now. » While his team has the best overall shooting percentage in the league, tied with the Nuggets at 50.6%, it suffers a lot from 3-pointers: just 33.3%, 26th in the league.

Above all, with 10.9 turnovers, the Lakers are the most infertile team on the court. Last night in Utah, Los Angeles narrowly missed reaching this average (10/38) and was not helped by the stars: 3/12 for Luka Doncic, 1/8 for Austin Reaves, 0/4 for LeBron James.

« We have to hit our shots, take them with confidence. (…) We made 23 assists, we could have easily made around 30 if we had made our shots tonight. We have to shoot better, but it has to come through mutual trust and confidence to make these shots », demands the coach.

Last year’s example

A level of confidence that can be questioned when looking at, for example, Gabe Vincent’s sequence 3 minutes from the end of this journey on the jazz floor.

Still, 100% open in the corner in transition, he deflected the shot to feint and try to dribble… while walking the byline. The choice is all the more surprising because a few seconds earlier, he had sanctioned his only shot of the evening from the same spot.

« We shoot a lot of footage that comes our way. I don’t think we will necessarily reject them ” notes JJ Redick, before reflecting on last season: ” We started out bad from 3-point range, and then starting on December 23rd, I think against the Pistons, we did an intense shooting practice that morning, and from that point on, we became a very good shooting team. So it took two months of the regular season. »

If we keep the benchmark from this matchup against the Pistons, the Lakers shot 34.8% from 3-point range before this one, and then 37.5% from there. ” Hopefully this won’t take that long, but we have to shoot better if we want to be as good as we want to be », asks the coach again.