Subscribe
Follow Us
The Los Angeles Lakers' offense has somewhat stalled as of late, and while it might be puzzling to some, head coach JJ Redick has a very clear idea of why that is the case, and he outlined that with statistics when asked about those struggles.
“I would probably point immediately to our shot profile,” JJ Redick said, via Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “Over the last 13 [games], we're taking five more non-paint twos — we're shooting 39% on those. And for all the people that hate math, I shared this with the team this morning and I think it's really interesting. We're last, or second to last, in the last 13 in our offense. Those five extra non-paint twos, if we shot them at the same rate as Phoenix — who shoots 49% on non-paint twos — our offense would go from 29th to 27th.”
Redick outlines that even if the Lakers had shot better on their attempts as of late, they would not be seeing much improvement on the scoreboard. He went further to outline that the Lakers' shot selection is the problem, and that they need to be shooting more threes.
“If we took those five middies and we shot league average on threes, our offense would go from 27th to 12th,” Redick said. “Over the last 13, we're last in [three-point] makes, second-to-last in attempts, last in three-point percentage. In some ways, we need to shoot more threes and we need to make more threes. … We need to launch. We do. And that doesn't mean we're not trying to get to the rim every single time, but it's those two things. We want to live in the paint. We want to shoot threes. We haven't shot enough threes.”
Article Continues Below
Lakers' frustrations come to ahead vs. Pistons
The Lakers suffered a rough 117-114 loss to the Detroit Pistons at home on Monday. Malik Beasley fired a shot at Anthony Davis after the game, making matters a bit worse.
Despite the struggles offensively as of late, the Lakers were winners of three straight coming into the matchup against the Pistons. Los Angeles was looking to head into the Christmas Day matchup with Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors on a high note. Instead, the Lakers were dealt some rough injury news with D'Angelo Russell, will be looking for a rebound win against the Warriors.
The good news is that Redick has a plan to improve the offense, and he has communicated that to his team. Los Angeles is also in decent shape in the standings at 16-13 overall, good for seventh in the. tightly-contested Western Conference.
