1. Improved outside shooting
When news of Dennis Schroder’s trade to the Los Angeles Lakers went public, one thing that had fans very excited was his breakout outside shooting performance for the Oklahoma City Thunder the season prior.
In a sixth-man role for the Thunder, Schroder made 38.5% of his threes on five attempts per game. With outside shooting the biggest weakness of last season’s championship team, fans were excited that the trade for Schroder would go a long way towards addressing that weakness.
Unfortunately, Schroder’s three-point shooting has regressed to 34.4%, not far off his career 33.8% mark.
One thing that Malcolm Brogdon (39.1%), Fred VanVleet (36.7%), and Zach LaVine (41.6%) have in common that Schroder does not is elite outside shooting (or, in VanVleet’s case, a history of elite outside shooting).
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In particular, there’s an expectation that a point guard who commands north of $21 million a year is somewhat adept at creating an outside shot off the dribble.
However, Schroder’s 20.5% mark on pull-up threes is in the 20th percentile of all NBA players. In comparison, the three guards mentioned above all rank in the 70th percentile or better for pull-up threes and are much more adept at generating points in isolation situations.
Schroder somewhat makes up for this by consistently finishing reasonably well at the rim (78th percentile for Overall Finishing Talent, as per Bball Index). However, that mark pales compared to his contemporaries, such as Brogdon (91st percentile) and LaVine (98th percentile). On the whole, Schroder’s rim-finishing isn’t good enough to compensate for his subpar outside shooting.