Los Angeles Lakers: 3 low-cost backup point guard options
Number Three: Matthew Dellavedova
Matthew Dellavedova’s basketball skills crawled into a cave and hibernated during the 2019-2020 season. Still, there’s reason to believe a change to the more moderate temperatures of Los Angeles could wake him up.
Dellavedova might have been the worst regular rotation player in the NBA last year. He averaged 3 PPG, 3 APG, and 1 RPG while shooting an ugly 23 percent from deep. Overall he had an almost impossibly bad effective field goal percentage of 41 percent.
Matthew wasn’t just a one-dimensionally lousy player. He mixed his atrocious offense with lazy and uninspired defense. Dellavedova had a 118 defensive rating, which was good for 17th on the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team not exactly known for its defensive prowess.
Matthew Dellavedova struggled last season for the 19-46 Cavaliers, a squad that saw its first head coach get fired halfway through the season, and that was also grooming two underwhelming young point guards in Collin Sexton and Darius Garland. There’s reason to believe that Dellavedova, at age 29, didn’t somehow forget how to play basketball. The more logical explanation was that he was dogging it last year.
Dellavedova is only a few years removed from playing solid basketball with LeBron James as the Cavaliers made numerous runs to the finals. During the 2015 and 2016 seasons, Matthew shot 40 percent and 41 percent respectively from deep while playing next to LeBron James. He was never a lockdown defender, but he played better than average on the less glamorous side of the ball. He was a crucial piece in the Cavaliers championship run during 2016.
The Purple and Gold don’t have the kind of money to go after one of the elite backup point guards that will be available (i.e., Fred VanVleet, Kris Dunn, or even Jordan Clarkson). Dellavedova is a better choice for the Lakers than other unrestricted free agent point guards like D.J. Augustin and Yogi Ferrell or the incumbent, Rajon Rondo, because he’s a proven champion with the size to play solid defense (a skill the three players listed above lack).
Plus, he has the ball-handling ability and playmaking skills to run the offense for ten to 15 minutes per game while LeBron rests.