If you’re a member of the Los Angeles Lakers and you want to shoot threes during games, head coach Luke Walton is officially going to make you work for it.
For now, at least.
The Lakers, collectively, are shooting under 30 percent from long range–by far and away the worst mark in league. The Memphis Grizzlies, who place second to last in this department, are still putting down 32.6 percent of their triples. Though Walton isn’t quite sure how to remedy the situation, he is trying something drastic: forcing anyone who wishes to fire away from deep in a game to swish 100 triples every day.
Here’s the skinny, via the Sacramento Bee‘s Ailene Voisin:
The Lakers’ 3-point shooting overall has been so poor, Walton is requiring every player who shoots 3s in a game to convert 100 daily for 30 consecutive days.
“We made up a contract,” he explained. “We printed them out. We had the players sign them. We’ll do that every day for 30 days and see how that impacts our percentage.”
In addition to seeing how this impacts the Lakers’ overall shooting from deep, it’ll be interesting to see how it affects their volume from behind the rainbow. About 27.9 percent of their total shot attempts are coming from three-point land. Only two teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Sacramento Kings, allocate a smaller share of their field-goal opportunities to threebies.
Demanding in-game shooters put down 100 triples every day could lower the Lakers’ volume, depending on how many players do or don’t complete the challenge. It could also have the opposite effect, perhaps making certain peeps more comfortable with throwing them up at all.
Regardless, this approach certainly cannot hurt. The league-average clip from beyond the arc is 36 percent. The Lakers don’t have anyone shooting better than that as of Tuesday night. Jordan Clarkson comes closest with his dead-on 36 percent success rate. Something, anything, needs to be done in order to boost their aggregate appeal from distance.
