If you were tasked with building a basketball team around Luka Doncic, Los Angeles Lakers wing Adou Thiero would stand out as an intriguing player. At 6-foot-7 with freakish athleticism and a long wingspan (7 feet), Thiero can both disrupt plays defensively and soar above the rim to catch lobs from Doncic, especially in transition.
Thiero is an NBA sophomore, but he began his rookie season in 2025-26 recovering from knee surgery. He didn't contribute a whole lot to last year's Lakers (6.0 minutes per game in 25 appearances), but he always managed to show flashes of his ridiculous bounce and nose for the ball.
Adou Thiero's poor shooting is holding him back from a bigger role with Lakers
Lakers head coach JJ Redick is intent on developing Thiero, but that'll be a difficult project if Thiero's shot doesn't improve markedly in the coming months. Lakers analyst Jovan Buha went as far as to say that, “The only thing I think holding (Thiero) out from potentially being a starter right now is just the shot” during a recent Lakers Collective show. That goes to show you how many good things Thiero contributes to winning.
Even so, playing alongside Doncic as a non-shooter is pretty much not in the cards, not as a regular rotation piece, anyway. NBA defenses are just too smart. They'll sag off Thiero and clog the lane, making things more congested for Doncic and Austin Reaves. It's exactly what Redick and the Lakers want to avoid.
Thiero's defensive versatility and transition explosiveness remain tantalizing, and he'll remain a situational player on the Lakers' bench based on those attributes alone. But if Thiero wants to make the leap to a 20-minute role (or even a starter, as Buha suggested), he's got to become a passable jump-shooter. It's as simple as that.
Thiero's only 22 years old. He's improved in other areas of his game already, like decision-making, reading the floor, and playing off two feet in the paint. He's self-aware about his deficiencies as a player and eager to mitigate them. This leads one to believe that Thiero can improve as a shooter. But shooting mechanics (and the development of them) are never easy to predict on a player-to-player basis. Some guys just never figure it out, for whatever reason, be it physical or mental.
The Lakers are obviously hoping that Thiero doesn't fall into that category. If he can force defenses to respect his jumper, that would also open up opportunities for him to leverage his athleticism with one- or two-dribble drives into space, piercing defenses and honing his court-reading all the more. All in all, keep an eye on Thiero this season as he experiences his first extended stretch of health in a Lakers uniform.
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