The Los Angeles Lakers traded Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanley Johnson for Patrick Beverley at the tail end of the offseason. While it was a shame to see how much THT’s trade value plummeted, at the end of the day, this trade was a very smart one to make.
Rob Pelinka has not done much to gain the faith of Lakers fans in recent years but this is one move that they can be proud of. The only problem is that the following moves did not make a lot of sense with this Beverley trade in tow.
Los Angeles doubled down on being guard-heavy and signed Dennis Schroder two weeks before training camp began. Now the Lakers have an unbalanced roster that is filled to the brim with guards but is lacking in wings.
Instead of adding actual wings to the roster, Pelinka and co. have a band-aid fix. Their solution, instead of adding an actual wing, is to just say that someone is going to be a wing for the team and hope it pans out. That is exactly what the team is doing with Patrick Beverley, and quite frankly, it is laughable.
Rob Pelinka confirms they look at Patrick Beverley as a 3-and-D wing on this roster.
— Daniel Starkand (@DStarkand) September 26, 2022
Beverley can play defense and can hit down the occasional three-point shot, which has to be why Los Angeles thinks he can pull this off. However, the team is going to be in for a rude awakening.
The Lakers will quickly realize that Patrick Beverley is simply not a 3-and-D wing.
Patrick Beverley is six-foot-one. While he might be one inch taller than me, he is near the bottom of the height spectrum when it comes to an NBA player. When Beverley is being a perimeter defender that defends other guards, that height does not matter that much.
And heck, Beverley absolutely can defend star forwards in certain possessions when the situation calls for it. We have seen Beverley defend LeBron James quite well several times in the past, so that potential is there.
But to try and pass off a point guard as a wing just because he is not a traditional point guard? Now that is absurd, and quite frankly, is scary for Lakers fans.
If Los Angeles genuinely believes that Beverley is going to be a wing then that means we will likely see some three-guard lineups in the future. Don’t be surprised if Los Angeles runs a lot of lineups that has a combination of Beverley, Dennis Schroder, Russell Westbrook, Kendrick Nunn, Austin Reaves and Lonnie Walker all on the court.
All of these players are guards and Los Angeles will probably be required to have three of them on the court together at the same time for most of the game. That is a nightmare.
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Not only is the shooting of that group pretty bad (if Beverley is your best three-point shooter you have a problem), but the defense is not good either. Nobody outside of Beverley is any good at defending and the Lakers are going to be asking Beverley to guard wings? Talk about maximizing a player’s skill set.