Los Angeles Lakers: 5 shooters to target with 22nd pick

For the past six seasons, the Los Angeles Lakers have ranked in the bottom 10 in the league in 3-point shooting as a team during the regular season. Last season they ranked as the ninth-worst team in that category shooting 35.4% from beyond the arc.

For comparison, the teams that are still playing in the NBA Finals, the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns ranked fifth and seventh in the regular season in 3-point shooting percentage respectively.

This points to the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers outside shooting needs to significantly improve to contend next season.

The NBA is increasingly becoming more 3-point oriented year after year, and that was evident in their series with the Phoenix Suns where they shot the Lakers out of the gym in the final games of that series and had no one to hit big shots from that distance. In the last game of that series, the Suns hit 18 3-point attempts on 51.4% shooting from that range, and the Lakers only hit 10 shooting 28.6%.

Roster construction could be to blame for their struggles shooting from deep because only three Lakers shot above 40% from three last season, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Alex Caruso, and Marc Gasol. The Lakers will definitely look to upgrade their shooting in the free-agent market, but another obvious way they could help remedy their shooting woes would be to draft a player that can come in and hit shots right away.

These players will have to adjust to the NBA 3-point distance, but the days of centers dominating the college game are over and the collegiate level has also become more perimeter-oriented, with more and more stretch big men coming into the league.

The Lakers have used later picks in the draft to try and draft 3-point specialists in the past, having drafted Sasha Vujacic with the 27th pick and he became the self-proclaimed machine from three. More recently, they drafted Svi Mykhailiuk with their second-round pick in 2018 and he is still in the league hitting threes for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

It would not be surprising to see the Lakers do something similar with the 22nd pick in this year’s draft and try to get a three and D specialist. There are plenty of options that could slide to that range in a talented draft class, and these are five guys the Lakers should keep their eye on and look to call their name when they are on the clock on July 29th.