The speculation can now end. The Los Angeles Lakers filled the final roster spot on the team on Tuesday with a veteran three and D wing player.
Shams Charania of The Athletic first reported that the Lakers signed former Houston Rocket Ben McLemore for the rest of the season. McLemore gives the Lakers the three and D presence that they were reportedly looking for in the final roster spot.
This was great timing by the Lakers and us here at Lake Show Life. This morning, I published a piece breaking down why McLemore was the perfect plan B target for the Lakers. Plan A, in my optimistic mind, was the team landing Otto Porter Jr.
However, Porter is yet to be bought out by the Orlando Magic, so it makes sense for the Lakers to act fast and make sure they at least get to add someone that can play on the playoff roster.
So what are the Los Angeles Lakers getting with Ben McLemore?
The team is getting a three and D wing that is historically a great three-point shooter but has regressed a tad this season. As is the case with every buyout signing, it is unclear what version of McLemore will show up in LA.
Will he get red-hot and prove to be one of the best buyout signings of the season? Or will he simply be the ninth man in the rotation and not make a tangible difference once the playoffs roll around?
With McLemore now officially a Laker, we thought it would be best to break down his potential ceiling with the Lakers as well as his potential floor, comparing him to recent Lakers in the process.
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.
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.