The Los Angeles Lakers are halfway through the preseason and while the game outcomes do not matter, there is a lot to learn about the team in these games. Last year the Lakers were awful in the preseason with fans and players alike spinning it as not mattering.
What happened? That awful preseason ended up being a precursor for a pretty awful regular season. The win-loss record doesn’t matter, but how the team plays certainly does and there have been some good and bad things this preseason.
Most of the good comes at the individual level. But there have been some pretty concerning issues at the macro level that fans should be worried about. If these issues are fixed, we are doomed for another horrible season.
1. The Los Angeles Lakers cannot shoot threes
This should not come as much of a surprise as the roster is constructed with very few reliable three-point shooting options. This is something that fans and analysts alike have been screaming into the clouds about for months and we have seen the issue on full display thus far in the preseason.
As a team, the Lakers are shooting a staggeringly low 30.2% from beyond the arc in the preseason thus far. That number alone is pretty bad but what makes it worse is the fact that it is being carried by two massively-hot performances that aren’t translatable across an 82-game season.
Kendrick Nunn is shooting 52.9% and Matt Ryan (who isn’t even a lock to make the roster, although LeBron James wants him signed) is shooting 42.9%. Outside of Nunn and Ryan, the Lakers are shooting 24.8% from three.
That is absolutely horrendous. The three-point shot is far too important in today’s game and while there are some players contributing to that number that won’t play in the regular season, there is also the likes of Austin Reaves, Lonnie Walker and Juan Toscano-Anderson that are contributing to the low percentage.