I watched the Lakers vs Warriors game last night and I didn’t think that the Lakers had a massive lack of talent outside of Lebron and AD. They had solid moments where they played good defense and when they were disciplined and stayed in their lane on offense—they showed flashes. However—imo their biggest problem was shot selection. Even at his age—Lebron is at his best when he aggressively attacks the basket. AD‘s biggest advantage comes from when he uses his size and quickness to get to the basket. Even Westbrook had his best moments when he was aggressive and tried to get to the basket. However, the Lakers seemed to shoot themselves in the foot by launching three pointer after three pointer. I think Lebron took 9 or 10 himself. Out of the Lakers 93 field goal attempts last night—40 were 3’s. If you remove their 3 point attempts—they went 30/53 from the field from 2 point range. If they stay healthy, and if Darvin Ham can manage to keep them disciplined on the offensive end—I think the Lakers could be a playoff team. However—if they continue to jack up 30-40 three point shots per game—this team will be gone fishing by the time the playoffs start.
I thought the same thing. None of those three are at their best shooting jumpers.
They have to play inside out, with the emphasis on inside, scoring around the basket, running breaks to finish at the basket. They simply don't have the personnel to run a modern, analytics optimal style offense that emphasizes 3 point shooting. They don't have competent 3 point shooters. They'll have to lean into that, focus on what they do have, or there are going to be lots of nights like last night and they'll be a sub .500 team.
Ham obviously has no idea what his rotation will be, what his most cohesive personnel groups are, where people are supposed to be on offense or defense. He gets a bit of a grace period since they gave him essentially an entirely new set of puzzle pieces that haven't played together, but he'll need to figure it out in a couple months.
Pretty sure this will be another wasted season for LeBron and Davis though. The Warriors' 10th guy is better than the Lakers' 4th guy, this roster just isn't good enough.