Los Angeles Lakers: Instant takeaways in sloppy loss to Thunder

3. The Los Angeles Lakers will not get far in the NBA Playoffs with this shooting

The Los Angeles Lakers’ shooting in the Orlando bubble has been woeful. And yes, I understand that they have not played professional basketball in four months, and yes, this game technically does not matter, but you cannot watch this shooting display from the Lakers and be pleased.

The Lakers already set two season-lows in field goal percentage earlier in the bubble. The team’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers set a new low at 39 percent and then bested that low with a 35.4 percent shooting night against the Raptors.

The Lakers got much better against the Jazz, shooting 50 percent from the field, but that was in large part due to Anthony Davis. The team still was not great from beyond the arc (34.6 percent) and they shot 25 percent from downtown against Toronto and 30.6 against the Clippers.

The Lakers made 5 of 37 three-point shots (13.5 percent) against Oklahoma City and posted another new season-worst field goal percentage of 35.2 percent.

If it was just one bad shooting night that would be one thing. It has not been that.

While this is not an included takeaway, as it was not as bad in this game, the team is still struggling with their perimeter defense. While the Thunder were ice cold from beyond the arc, if the Lakers play a good three-pointing team that gets hot, like the Blazers, and shoots this poorly, then they absolutely could get upset in the first round.

As we said after the Raptors game and after the Jazz game, the Lakers still have time to figure it out. But that cannot be a blanket excuse for bad basketball. At some point, the Lakers need to play better basketball.