Coming off of the worst season in franchise history, one that saw the Los Angeles Lakers rank 24th in the NBA in offensive efficiency, head coach Byron Scott is loosening his stance on the long ball.
Around this time last year, Scott told reporters that he only wanted the Lakers to shoot 10-15 threes per game. That archaic game plan would have left the Lakers far behind the league's trend toward a higher and higher volume of high-efficiency outside looks, and it would have left the Lakers dead last in 3-point attempts.
As it turned out, the Lakers took the 25th-most attempts, launching 18.9 triples per game at a 34.4-percent clip, not too far below league average. Coming off a season in which the NBA as a whole attempted a record 22.4 threes per game, and in which he said the 3-pointer "doesn't win you championships," Scott is ready to let his team fire even more freely.
Scott told Los Angeles Daily News this week that the team's roster of potential shooters has him wanting to see them attempt 18-25 threes per game, a rate that would have ranked them somewhere between 10th and 27th last year.
The move makes sense, not only because the league is trending in that direction as a whole, but because strong outside shooting is what good offenses do now. The conference finals included four of the league's five best 3-point-shooting teams by total makes, and only one team in the top nine in attempts failed to make the playoffs.
And Scott is right that the Lakers are potentially well-suited to bomb from outside, especially without an established interior threat on the offensive end.
| Player | 2014-15 3FG% | Career 3FG% |
|---|---|---|
| Nick Young | 36.9% | 37.6% |
| Lou Williams | 34.0% | 34.1% |
| Metta World Peace | N/A | 34.1% |
| Ryan Kelly | 33.6% | 33.7% |
| Kobe Bryant | 29.3% | 33.4% |
| Jordan Clarkson | 31.4% | 31.4% |
| -- | NCAA 3FG% | |
| D'Angelo Russell | 43.2% | |
| Michael Frazier II | 41.1% | |
| Anthony Brown | 40.4% |
That's not a Golden State Warriors-level stable of marksmen, but it's a large group of moderately effective shooters. For a team that averaged 1.03 points per possession last season, even a 35-percent mark from outside represents an upgrade on the average possession.
