Los Angeles Lakers: The ceiling and floor of new Laker, Ben McLemore
By Jason Reed
Ben McLemore’s potential ceiling with the Los Angeles Lakers:
Ben McLemore is not going to walk in and be the third-best player on an NBA Championship contender. In fact, he is not going to be the most impactful buyout signing, even if he does hit his ceiling. Barring an injury, that honor will go to Andre Drummond.
That does not mean that McLemore’s ceiling is low, though. This is a team that needed more shooting depth off the bench. The Lakers are not a three-point-centric team but you still need to be able to hit shots, especially in the playoffs.
And as it stands right now, the Lakers do not have any great shooters. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is either Stephen Curry or Dwight Howard on any given night and the likes of Wesley Matthews and Dennis Schroder have not shot the ball as well as they could. Alex Caruso and Talen Horton-Tucker are not shooters.
McLemore could become one of the Lakers’ primary shooters off the bench. His defense is good enough and will be serviceable in Frank Vogel’s defensive schemes, but he is not going to be known as a lockdown defender off the bench.
The best version of McLemore is someone who can come in, play 15 minutes of adequate defenses and hit 2-3 three-point shots a night on efficient shooting.
Think Markieff Morris from last year’s playoffs.
I made this comparison in the original McLemore article and I wanted to revisit it. While Morris and McLemore are much different players, the shooting impact that McLemore could have could be similar to Morris last year.
Morris shot 42% on 69 threes in the NBA Playoffs last year (3.3 attempts per game). Morris not only had the best three-point percentage on the team (with at least five attempts), but he posted the third-highest three-point percentage in a single playoff for the Lakers (with at least 69 attempts).
Morris made the fourth-most threes for the Lakers in the playoffs because of his efficiency. That is the ceiling of McLemore. An efficient shooter off the bench that can have big games where he goes 4/4 from beyond the arc with the four shots being momentum changers.