Getty The Lakers are 0-4
The Los Angeles Lakers have started the 2022-23 season 0-4 and one of the best players in franchise history is disturbed by what he’s seen.
Lakers icon Magic Johnson sent out two tweets on October 27th about the Lakers, who are last in the NBA in points per game and offensive rating.
I’m agonizing over the @Lakers play, the lack of shooting, and the 0-4 record. If my Lakers don’t start shooting better, this could be a longgg season for us Laker fans.
On the flip side, Coach Hamm has done a really good job on the defensive end. We are playing with intensity and are a much more athletic team.
The Lakers are shooting 22.3% from beyond the arc as a team through the first four games of the season. That’s the worst 3-point field goal percentage over any four-game span by any team within a season in NBA history, per Marc J. Spears of Andscape.
All of the Lakers stars are struggling to shoot from deep. LeBron James is shooting 25.7% from 3, Kendrick Nunn is shooting 23.5%, Patrick Beverley is shooting 18.8%, Anthony Davis is shooting 18.2%, Lonnie Walker IV is shooting 17.4%, Juan Toscano-Anderson is shooting 12.5% and Russell Westbrook is shooting 8.3%.
The Lakers have started the season with losses against the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, Portland Trail Blazers and Denver Nuggets. They have made only 33 3-pointers in 148 attempts.
The Lakers Need to Make a Trade
The Lakers have to make a trade if they want to salvage the season. Most pundits believe general manager Rob Pelinka should trade Westbrook to the Indiana Pacers for shooting guard Buddy Hield and center Myles Turner.
“Pelinka needs to call Indiana back,” Chris Mannix of SI.com wrote on October 26th. “Now. Not next week. Not around Thanksgiving, which the Lakers leaked was the penciled-in date to re-survey the landscape. Now. The Pacers, who dropped to 1–3 on Monday and would desperately like to get into the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes, will likely be interested. L.A., which can’t afford to waste any LeBron James seasons, needs to get interested, too. Is it a blockbuster? No. Hield and Turner are flawed players. But Hield is a career 43% three-point shooter. Turner shoots 35% from 3 and is the kind of shot-blocking center that should slide in nicely alongside Anthony Davis. The Lakers, the NBA’s worst three-point shooting team, would immediately become a better one.”
According to an October 3rd report from Sam Amick, Shams Charania and Jovan Buha of The Athletic, the Lakers seriously considered trading Westbrook and unprotected first-round picks in 2027 and 2029 to the Pacers for Turner and Hield before training camp started. Hield and Turner are better fits on the Lakers than Westbrook is since both players can shoot from the perimeter.
Hield is a career 39.8% shooter from beyond the arc, while Turner is at 34.8%. Turner is also a two-time blocks champion.
Westbrook Can’t Shoot
Westbrook wasn’t a good fit next to James and Davis last season and he’s been even worse in 2022-23. The 2016-17 MVP is 3-of-17 on jump shots in the three games he’s played in, according to Kirk Goldsberry of ESPN. Westbrook has become a liability on offense since he can’t shoot jumpers.
Per Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, opponents are contesting jump shots by Westbrook only 41.2% of the time this season. Per Second Spectrum, that’s the lowest contest rate in NBA tracking data history, which dates back to 2013-14.
“To put Westbrook’s 41.2 percent contest rate in perspective, only two other players on record have had less than 50 percent of their jumpers contested: Joakim Noah, at 48.7 percent in 2013-14 with the Bulls, and Andre Roberson, at 48.8 percent during the 2016-17 season with the Thunder,” O’Connor wrote. “This season, Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon’s 60 percent contest rate is the league’s second-lowest behind Westbrook’s.”