THE LOS ANGELES LAKERS are in deep trouble.
Their 0-3 start to the season has exposed a fatal flaw in the team's current architecture: This team can't shoot. In the midst of a 3-point shooting revolution that has reformed basketball forever, the design of the current Lakers roster defies the basic fact that shooting is the oxygen that modern NBA offenses need to breathe.
It's hard to overstate how bad it has been early. The Lakers have made just 21.2% of their 118 3-point shots so far this season. They're shooting 23% on all jump shots and 40.7% overall. No team has shot under 41% for a full season since the 2014-15 Philadelphia 76ers, a team intentionally constructed to lose as many games as possible in an attempt to get the No. 1 overall pick.
The Lakers weren't built to tank (they don't control their first-round pick, so it's not an option this year), but it's not clear what they were built for because it sure isn't making shots. The Lakers' inability to do the one thing that is at the core of the sport -- put the ball in the basket -- isn't the fault of any individual player or coach, but rather it's the result of a series of head-scratching personnel decisions that have left the most glamorous franchise in the NBA devoid of any elite shooting talent.
So blame Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis or even LeBron James all you want. The real reason this team has no shot goes far deeper.
IT TOOK LESS than one game in this young season for opponents to figure out that they don't even need to defend the Lakers shooters.
Over the past two games, the Lakers have attempted 22 uncontested 3-pointers. Only four of those have gone in. That's 18.2%, by far the worst percentage among the 105 instances of a team attempting 20 uncontested 3s over a two-game span in the player tracking era (since 2013-14).
The Lakers have the worst offense in the NBA right now, yielding a miserable 97 points per 100 possessions. No other current team is below 103 points per 100. Their 23% shooting on jumpers would be the worst -- by far -- over the past 25 seasons.
These stats are more than just esoteric trivia that illuminates the Lakers' early-season struggles. They're emblematic of the roster construction issues that have brought the Lakers to this point. And those issues start at the top of the roster.
The Lakers' top tier consists of three players -- Westbrook, James and Davis -- making more than $37 million in salary this season. The Lakers' second tier -- literally everyone else on the roster -- makes around $40 million combined. Yet no matter the cost, the problem is the same. There isn't enough shooting talent in either tier.
Over the past five-plus NBA seasons, exactly 200 different players have attempted at least 1,000 jump shots. Among that enormous group, Davis ranks 198th with an effective field goal percentage of 40.9%. One of the two players who ranks worse? Westbrook, who is last at 40.4%.
With James on board, the Lakers have one of the best on-ball playmakers in basketball history running their offense, but that means both Westbrook and Davis are playing off the ball a lot, and the numbers prove that doesn't scare anyone.
Among the 167 NBA players who have attempted at least 10 3s in this young season, Westbrook and Davis are enjoying the most shooting space.
Again, this is more than just esoteric trivia. In two of the Lakers' first three games, opponents have used centers to defend Westbrook (and I use the word "defend" about as loosely as those centers guarded Westbrook), staying comfortably near the paint while daring Westbrook to shoot wide-open jumpers, which he happily did, much to Lakers fans' dismay.
Even though Westbrook's 12 attempted 3-pointers rank just 90th in the NBA this season, he leads the league by far in uncontested 3-point attempts. Eight of his 12 attempts have come with no defender within 8 feet of him as he shot, and he has converted just one of those eight. By comparison, the leaguewide average on wide-open 3-point attempts is 36.8%.
As a result, even when James is running a pick-and-roll action with Davis, the Lakers' opponents typically have a large help defender standing by to protect the rim.
The Portland Trail Blazers used massive 290-pound center Jusuf Nurkic to "guard" Westbrook on Sunday. Even when Westbrook was stationed off-ball, beyond the arc, Nurkic was lurking, waiting to provide interior help and rebounding for Portland. Last week, the LA Clippers used 7-footer Ivica Zubac on Westbrook. Don't be surprised to see two-time reigning MVP Nikola Jokic playing free safety Wednesday when the Lakers visit the Denver Nuggets (10 p.m. ET on ESPN) while nominally guarding a wide-open Westbrook.
Good shooters don't just drain 3s, they open up the floor for their teammates. But since the Lakers' starting group fails to include even one legitimate catch-and-shoot threat on the edges, opposing defenses are clogging up the interior.
That's a red flag, so any front office tasked with building a champion around these three stars would have to make shooting a priority throughout the rest of the roster.
That didn't happen.
JAMES IS GOING to become the NBA's all-time leading scorer later this season, but he already is the NBA's all-time leader in assists on 3-point baskets. He has assisted on more 3s (3,449) than NBA 3-point king Stephen Curry has made (3,133).
There are two big reasons James became the king of the 3-point dime. The first is his brilliant ability to break down defenses, attack the paint and find open shooters on the edges. He always makes the right play. The second is that the organizations that he has played for since he first left Cleveland in 2010 have typically done a great job of surrounding him with shooting talent.
In those previous stops, James has played with Ray Allen and Kyle Korver, who rank second and fifth, respectively, on the NBA's career 3-pointer list. There have been 48 players in NBA history who've shot at least 40% from 3-point range in their careers, and James has been teammates with nearly a quarter of them. But none of those players are on this season's Lakers.
James is still holding up his end of the bargain. Of the Lakers' 62 wide-open 3-point attempts this season, 15 have come directly off a pass from James, but the Lakers have made just three of those shots. He ranks 11th in the NBA with 7.3 assists per game despite his teammates shooting just 48.8% off his passes (including 25% on 3s).
The Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers drew up the blueprint for sustainable success around James in the 2010s, leading to eight consecutive Finals appearances. But the Lakers tore up the plans in the 2020s, and their approach isn't working.
Last season, the Lakers ranked 22nd in 3-point percentage and 18th in 3-pointers made per game, not great, but nowhere near this season's failures. However, four of the five most prolific 3-point shooters from last season's Lakers group are not on this season's squad. Malik Monk signed as a free agent with the Sacramento Kings, while Carmelo Anthony, Avery Bradley and Wayne Ellington remain unsigned. That quartet combined to provide the purple and gold with 49% of its made 3s last season, and the team's moves this offseason failed to replace all that shooting. As a result, the Lakers' perimeter talent has gone from mediocre to starved.
When the Lakers won it all in 2019-20, they were a below-average 3-point shooting team, but their rotation included both Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, two prototypical 3-and-D specialists who could space the floor and knock down shots at efficient levels while also providing solid defense.
While front offices around the league have filled their rosters with more and more 3-point shooters, the Lakers' version has gone the other way -- and the early returns suggest Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka's team-building strategy was a catastrophe.
Months after winning in the bubble, the Lakers traded Green for Dennis Schroder, who shot 33.5% from 3 in his lone season as a Laker before departing in free agency and re-signing this year (Schroder, a career 33.8% 3-point shooter, is currently out after undergoing surgery on his right thumb).
A year later as part of the disastrous Westbrook deal, the Lakers shipped Caldwell-Pope to the Washington Wizards. He's in Denver shooting 47.6% from 3 this season. He has made 10 3-pointers this season; the entire Lakers bench has combined for nine.
While it's fair to expect the Lakers to improve somewhat (it's almost impossible for a team to shoot this poorly for an entire season), the current roster construction has put a ceiling on their offense. Patrick Beverley is the only Lakers player with a career 3-point shooting percentage better than 37% -- and he's shooting 21.4% this season.
Pelinka will need to make significant personnel moves, or else this offense is destined for failure and the Lakers are destined to send another lottery pick -- maybe even the pick that gets once-in-a-lifetime prospect Victor Wembanyama -- to the New Orleans Pelicans.