Dennis Schroder, for bad reasons
I was a huge fan of the Dennis Schroder trade last offseason and if I could go back and change anything I wouldn’t. Danny Green was a distressed asset that was not helpful to the team in the playoffs last year and they flipped him and a late first-round pick for an improvement.
However, after watching Schroder for an entire season in the purple and gold it is clear that his box score numbers can be a bit misleading. While he put up really impressive numbers with LeBron James out, that helped tell the story of why Schroder is not as valuable as it seems.
Schroder is a classic case of a player who needs the basketball a lot to be successful. The higher his usage rate the more successful he is going to be. That is obviously not going to be very high when both LeBron and Anthony Davis are healthy and his play often takes a hit as a result.
And quite frankly, if Schroder is getting a usage rate in the 30s on a team then that team probably is not very good.
Look at the Lakers’ last game against the Pacers in which LeBron returned. Schroder scored 14 points with only four assists and one rebound. He shot 33.3% from the field and had the worst plus/minus of any member of the starting five.