1. He can flat out shoot the basketball
It is no secret that the best part of Quinn Cook’s game is his ability to be a sharpshooter from beyond the arc. He is a career 41% three-point shooter and that percentage stayed consistent at 40% even when he increased his attempts from 104 to 200 from 2017-18 to 2018-19.
The only player on the roster last season that shot above 40% from three was Alex Caruso and he only attempted 50 the entire season. It is obvious that Cook can provide a much-needed boost in this category this upcoming season.
As a team, the Lakers ranked 29th in the league in 3-point percentage last season with a dreadful 34%. Conversely, the Warriors, the team that Cook played for, ranked in third place with 38%. Obviously Cook was not the main reason why, but his 40% from 3-point range last season did not hurt their cause, and he learned from some of the games best shooters around him.
With 81 threes made last season, Cook would have been top 5 in 3-pointers made on the Lakers. The most impressive part about that stat is that the rest of that top five took at least 74 more 3-point attempts than Cook did last season.
If Cook took the place of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope as the Lakers go to catch and shoot guy on the perimeter, and kept his percentage consistent, he could account for 174 made threes next season. To put that number in perspective, KCP only made 151 on 435 attempts, and Kyle Kuzma only made on 128 on 422 attempts, and they were the leading three-point shooters on the team.
It has been five seasons since the Lakers ranked in the top 10 in 3-point shooting, and it has been thirteen seasons since the Lakers have had a player rank in the top 10 in 3-pointers made in a season. If the Lakers give Cook the attempts that their top shooters got last season, he could help them break both of those droughts this year.
One of the biggest criticisms of the roster last season was that there were not enough shooters surrounding LeBron, something his prior championship teams had. With Danny Green and Cook added to the mix this season, that problem should no longer exist.