LA Lakers’ failure to address their shooting issues could lead to another wasted season for LeBron James | NBA News

The LA Lakers are now 0-3 to begin the new NBA season and their shooting, oft-criticised and long since known as the team’s glaring weakness, has been simply woeful to begin the campaign – and it is costing the team dearly on a nightly basis.

The Lakers, as currently constructed, could be forgiven somewhat for losses against the defending champion Golden State Warriors and an über-deep Clippers team to begin the campaign. But going 6-for-33 from deep to fall to defeat against a rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers team is just not on for one with a history such as the 18-time champion Lakers.

You cannot blame Darvin Ham either, the head coach has been in the door five minutes and is doing the best with what he has been given.

He even benched the boo-boys’ favourite victim to pick on, Russell Westbrook, for the last three possessions of Sunday night’s 106-104 loss to Portland – but it mattered not.

Westbrook finished with 10 points on 4-for-15 shooting, and the Blazers’ key 10-point surge to take the lead came after the former MVP was subbed back into the game with 4:42 remaining in the fourth quarter. At that point the Lakers led by eight points, but it all fell to bits in the way you just do not expect it to in a team anchored by a legend of the sport such as James.

A key moment came with 27.3 seconds remaining in the game and 18 seconds left on the shot clock when the Lakers led by a point. Despite having plenty of time to run a play which would allow him to drive to the rim, Westbrook – left unguarded by Jusuf Nurkic, essentially inviting him to shoot, missed a 15-foot pull-up jumper in what he later said was an attempt to go two-for-one.

Ham was unapologetic about the decision to bench Westbrook for the final dozen or so seconds of the game.

“We don’t have time for feelings or people being in their feelings,” the rookie head coach said. “Like, we’re trying to turn this thing around. For one person to be in their feelings about when and where and how they should be in the game, I don’t have any time for that.

“I just wish we would’ve attacked the rim directly. That’s the one shot that teams want you to take and want to give up – long twos, contested twos, what have you. And with his ability to explode and get to the basket still being at a high level, I wish he would’ve done that – especially with Nurkic standing back there with five fouls.

“Shot selection is something we have to work on.”

Simply put, the Blazers knew they could rely upon the Lakers to miss from beyond the arc and did not respect the three-point shot for most of the night. They knew they did not need to close out and guard because their opponents just were not going to make many of the shots.

James was throwing air-balls, Anthony Davis was hitting the side of the backboard from the corner and none of the Lakers could really get it to drop.

In total, the Lakers are 25-for-118 on three-pointers through the first three games. Of any team that has shot at least 100 threes over a three-game stretch, the Lakers are the second worst ever – and there have been 6,100 of them. Only the tanking 2018 Hawks have done worse since the metric has been measured.

That’s just another stat which crystallises just how bad their shooting woes have become. In terms of the most important statistical category of them all, they are also 0-3 to begin the season in terms of wins and losses – and the worst thing from their point of view is their big two players have been playing pretty well overall.

There was a period against the Blazers where Davis took over the game, demolishing everything which came his way on the defensive end (on his way to six blocks on the night) and flushing home every ball which was tossed up in anything approaching proximity to the rim on the other side of the court.

James is averaging a double-double, at 27.3 points, 11.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game, through those opening three losses.

It’s just not working though. Lakers vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s attempt to bring together a cast of ageing role players last year, who were a shadow of their former selves, did not work – and although he has tried to move the needle this year somewhat by acquiring Lonnie Walker IV, the team is still lacking what it has always needed most: shooting.

After the loss to the Warriors where the Lakers hit just 10 of their 40 attempts in the season opener against the Warriors, James said: “To be completely honest, we’re not a team constructed of great shooting. It’s not like we’re sitting here with a lot of lasers on our team.”

A veiled shot at the front office, perhaps, for not addressing what was a known issue?

Of the players on the current roster to shoot at least six three-pointers this season, not one player has hit at better than a 30 per cent clip. For the players who have hit double-figures in attempts, James leads the way on just 25.9 per cent; Kendrick Nunn has shot 23 per cent; Patrick Beverley is at 21 per cent; Davis at 20 per cent, Walker is at 17 per cent, and Westbrook is 1-for-12 to clock in at 8.7 per cent.

It’s been proved in the past that if you surround James with shooters, you have a good shot at winning a title (no pun intended). Pelinka – who cashed in his chips by trading for Westbrook, a move that many considered folly on a team which already had James as the primary ball-handler – tried to deviate from that template and it may prove to be the undoing for him, and this team in the end.

Despite all of that, in the offseason the Lakers’ front office chief was locked into a contract extension which stretches to 2026 – potentially an even more baffling move than the trade for Westbrook, a notoriously bad shooter. That perhaps points to the fact that the culpability for this mess extends wider than just Pelinka himself.

The Lakers front office has a decision-making committee which reportedly comprises president Jeanie Buss, Pelinka, and Kurt Rambis. Buss’ siblings Joey and Jesse have also taken an increasing role within the organisation’s hierarchy.

The Athletic reports, though, that it was Pelinka who – after working the phones to try and make a trade happen, namely with the Utah Jazz, Brooklyn Nets and Indiana Pacers – ultimately made the decision to proceed with Westbrook on the roster for the current season.

The report stated: “While Pelinka has been given the ultimate power to make these decisions, sources say there was a desire for the entire group to come to a consensus. It appears the voices of Joey and Jesse Buss are being considered among Lakers leaders now more than ever. If they were going to gamble on a make-or-break move of this magnitude, the thinking went, then everyone had to have confidence in the same vision.

“But when that wasn’t the case, sources say, the choice was made by Pelinka to remain patient and see, yet again, if Westbrook might find a way to make this imperfect fit with the Lakers work.”

The road forward from here is fairly bleak. Westbrook opted into his $47m contract for this season and, with the Lakers’ cupboard already fairly shorn of moveable assets, it makes that pretty much an impossible salary to offload. Once the books are clear of that at the end of this season it should afford Pelinka a little more flexibility but everyone can see how the Lakers are toiling right now and that fact in itself changes the conversation in terms of the value shooters will have for them.

It’s hard to say how many years James can continue to operate at the level he is currently at because King James, so far, continues to defy the passing of time and the usual onset wear-and-tear that causes athletes’ performance levels to degrade as they age.

He’s nearly 38 and is still one of the most dominant physical specimens in any sport. He spends over $1m each year to ensure his body remains in peak physical power to compete but he cannot continue to defy physiology forever.

All signs point to this being another year that the Lakers will be treading water, another year wasted in LeBron’s quest to win as many rings as he can before retirement.

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