Lakers News: LeBron James Calls Out L.A. Roster's Biggest Weakness
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It appears that LeBron James already knows that your Los Angeles Lakers aren't particularly great.
One game into the 2022-23 season, after a rough 1-5 preseason, it's pretty apparent that L.A. team vice president Rob Pelinka has assembled a rotation that, though generally younger and more athletic than last year's model, is lacking in the one attribute that almost any good LeBron James team needs: three-point shooting.
Oops.
The big story coming out of last night's 123-109 loss to the Golden State Warriors was the team's awful three-point conversion rate. Ben Golliver of The Washington Post captured some very candid postgame press conference reflections from the 37-year-old superstar, who had a solid stat-stuffing night during a contest that never got within single digits in the fourth quarter.
"We're getting great looks, but it could also be teams giving us great looks," James said when asked about the team's woeful shooting night (10-for-40, including a 1-for-17 start) from three-point range. "To be completely honest, we're not a team constructed of great shooting. And that's just what the truth of the matter is. It's not like we're sitting here with a lot of lasers on our team. That doesn't deter us from still trying to get great shots. When you get those opportunities you take them. But we're not sitting here with a bunch of 40-plus [percent] career three-point shooting guys."
James continued to more or less rag on his teammates' poor shooting abilities in another postgame comment. Dave McMenamin of ESPN has the full skinny. "I mean, let's keep it a buck, it would be like a football team, if you had a football analogy and you had a bunch of guys that were underneath route runners and wondering the quarterback is not throwing 20-plus [yard] passes down the field. That's how the team is constructed. That don't mean you can't win. [Tom] Brady did it."
By career three-point rate, here are the current Lakers' five best three-point shooters historically: Patrick Beverley (37.7% on 4.2 tries a night), Kendrick Nunn (36.5% on 5.8 triple attempts), Juan Toscano-Anderson (35.6% on 1.5 looks), James himself (34.6% on 4.5 attempts), and Lonnie Walker IV (34.2% on 3.6 looks). Obviously the point of surrounding James with three-point shooters is clearing the lane for him to draw defenders and then being able to dish to the shooters hopefully dotting the arc. James can't be two places at once, so his being a good three-point shooter won't really help him much.
