Ben McLemore’s potential floor with the Los Angeles Lakers:
This all has to do with how well he is shooting the basketball. This is not a situation where McLemore is a great defensive player and that alone with get him on the court. He is not Alex Caruso.
McLemore is a perfectly capable defender, that is it. Sometimes we tend to overvalue the defense of players that are labeled as three and D players. The same thing happens with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. KCP is good at checking guards as a perimeter defender, that is it.
McLemore also doesn’t really add much more offensively that would warrant minutes without a hot three-point shot. He is not someone who is going to facilitate, who is going to rebound or is going to open up the floor for everyone else.
He is a catch-and-shoot wing off the bench. He is in the same boat as Wesley Matthews and quite frankly, whoever has the hotter shooting stroke as we head into the playoffs should be the one that gets the bulk of the minutes.
The best recent example is Reggie Bullock.
This is not an apples-to-apples comparison as that year’s Lakers team did not make the NBA Playoffs and Reggie Bullock was able to rack up the minutes played on a bad team. However, if that version of Bullock would have been on this year’s team then he would have the same role as McLemore’s floor.
Bullock shot 34.3% from beyond the arc and played adequate defense. He was not bad but he certainly did not jump off the page. He was kind of just there, and the only reason he played as much as he did was that the team was not in the running for the playoffs.
If McLemore is not shooting at least 37% from beyond the arc with the Los Angeles Lakers by the time the playoffs role around then he will likely be deserved for blowout duty in the NBA Playoffs.