Welcome back to the Lakers newsletter, where we got plenty of rest while the team played pickleball.
A rare four-day stretch without a game may have done wonders for the Lakers’ small nagging injuries, but it interrupted the team’s rhythm going into Sunday’s game against the Utah Jazz. It showed in the clunky win in which the Lakers missed 28 three-point tries and let an 11-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to one.
Despite being quite literally one of the worst shooting teams in the league, the Lakers are still 12-4. Players credited the team’s resiliency and chemistry as reasons the Lakers are still winning, but how long can this team survive on pure vibes?
Don’t stop believing
Luka Doncic’s shot trickled over the front of the rim, bounced high above the basket and swished through the net. When the three-pointer finally fell, Doncic raised both arms in equal parts disbelief and relief.
He’s the NBA’s leading scorer, but Doncic is shooting a career-worst 31.1% from three on a career-high 11 three-point attempts per game. Austin Reaves, also enjoying a career season offensively, is shooting the same poor percentage from three-point range.
Almost every Lakers rotation player is shooting below his career average from three-point range through 16 games this season. Shooting 33.3% from three, the Lakers are 26th out of 30 teams. Their 10.9 makes a game are the fewest in the league.
“We’ve got to shoot the ball better,” coach JJ Redick said after the Lakers survived a comeback attempt against the Jazz on Sunday. “But it’s got to be a belief in each other and a belief in ourselves to knock down shots.”
Nearing the 20-game mark of the season, the Lakers are not fretting about their frigid outside shooting. Redick recalled how the Lakers shot 34.8% from three in the first two months of last season. Then after shooting 46.7% in a two-point loss to the Detroit Pistons on Dec. 23, the Lakers made 37.7% of their threes for the rest of the regular season.
Part of the shift came after the trade that brought Doncic. He shot 37.9% from three while with the Lakers last season, and the team’s overall three-point attempts increased from 33.8 per game to 40.4 in the final two months of the season.
The Lakers are taking 32.4 three-pointers per game this season. Redick anticipated that the number would rise, but with the current shooting struggles, he wanted to focus more on simply maximizing what his players do well.
“We’re going to do the things that put our guys in a position to create advantages and generate good offense,” Redick said before Sunday’s game. “However that looks as it morphs and evolves throughout the year, that’s just going to be what it is, the philosophy behind it. And if it ends up being we shoot 40 threes a game, great.”
Redick celebrated the team’s otherwise effective offense that is second in true shooting percentage (61.5%) and first in points per shot (1.42). The other glaring issue is turnover percentage, where the Lakers rank 28th.
“If we were out there not creating great looks or we were not playing [the right way] and we were playing selfish basketball [it would be different],” said LeBron James, who has made two of seven shots from three in his two games since returning from sciatica. “That’s not our M.O. So you look at over half of the threes that we missed tonight, a lot of them were wide open, but a lot of them were just finding the right player. The ball has so much energy in it that we’re not worried about that.”
Of their 38 three-point attempts against the Jazz, 25 came with the closest defender six or more feet away. The Lakers made just six of those open shots, with Doncic, Reaves and Marcus Smart going four for 17.
“We’re definitely gonna shoot better,” Smart said. “We work too hard not to.”
What’s up with the NBA Cup?
Even Deandre Ayton didn’t know what was going on with the NBA Cup. The Lakers center absorbed a turnover late in a blowout against the New Orleans Pelicans on Nov. 14 instead of taking an easy shot. When he heard his teammates screaming at him to shoot, he admitted later he didn’t realize the potential importance of those two points.
Ayton instead intertwined his middle and ring fingers and held his right hand up toward the bench. The ‘W’ is all that mattered.
Entering the final week of NBA Cup group play, the Lakers need just one more W to clinch their spot in the quarterfinals. The winner of Tuesday’s game between the Lakers and Clippers at Crypto.com Arena officially claims West Group B.
The Lakers and Clippers are 2-0 in group play with two games remaining. The group also includes the Memphis Grizzlies, the Dallas Mavericks and the already eliminated New Orleans Pelicans. The Lakers finish group play with the Dallas Mavericks on Friday in a game that, even if the Lakers clinch the top spot Tuesday, could still matter.
The three group winners advance to the quarterfinals, and the top second-place team from each conference earns a wild card. The two teams with the best group play record in each conference will host the quarterfinal games. The No. 1 seed goes to the team with the best overall record, and if the records are even, then point differential will be the first tiebreaker for seeding.
Oklahoma City is also 2-0 halfway through group play and has a league-best plus-63 point differential, putting the Thunder in position to earn the No. 1 seed in the West quarterfinals.
The Lakers have a plus-19 point differential in group games and are in position to be the second-seeded team in the West, possibly playing against the West Group C winner.
The third group in the West is one of the most competitive in the league as Portland and Denver entered this week tied with 2-1 records. Portland has the first-priority head-to-head tiebreaker against the Nuggets, but Denver has a plus-26 point differential that positions it well as a potential wild-card team.
Top-seeded teams will host the quarterfinal games on Dec. 9 and 10. The losing teams in each conference’s quarterfinals will play each other in a regular season game on one of four dates: Dec. 11, 12, 14 or 15. The semifinals are in Las Vegas on Dec. 13, and the final will be on Dec. 16.
On tap
Records and stats updated entering Monday’s games
Nov. 25 vs. Clippers (5-12), 8 p.m., NBA Cup group play
Kawhi Leonard returned to the lineup on Sunday against the Cleveland Cavaliers, scoring 20 points, but he couldn’t rescue the Clippers, who have just two wins in November,
Nov. 28 vs. Mavericks (5-13), 7 p.m., NBA Cup group play
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Anthony Davis is injured. After missing his return to L.A. last year because of an abdominal strain, the former Lakers’ star has been sidelined for almost a month with a calf injury, potentially delaying his much-anticipated first game in L.A. since the infamous trade.
Nov. 30 vs. Pelicans (2-15), 6:30 p.m.
The Pelicans took a big swing to draft Derik Queen in the first round last April and the former Maryland star is starting to show some signs of promise. Queen averaged 23.3 points and 8.3 rebounds in three games against Atlanta, Dallas and Denver. He added 11 assists in a 118-115 loss to the Mavericks that eliminated New Orleans from NBA Cup contention.
Dec. 1 vs. Suns (11-6), 7 p.m.
Losing Kevin Durant to free agency made it seem like Devin Booker and Phoenix would be in rebuild mode, but they’re in the thick of the West. Booker leads the team with 26.9 points and 7.1 assists per game.
Best thing I ate this week
Thit nuong
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
While the Lakers played pickleball, I was soaking up my extended home time with loved ones. One of my easy crowd pleasers is thit nuong, which is Vietnamese grilled pork. Slices of pork shoulder are marinated with garlic, shallots, lemongrass, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar and oyster sauce, threaded onto skewers and grilled. (I, however, don’t have a grill so I bake mine on a rack in the oven.) They’re a great finger food eaten off the skewer or as a meal with rice or, in this case, rice noodles. And it’s not Vietnamese if there aren’t pickled carrots and daikon.
My dad once told me my thit nuong was better than my mom’s. It is my greatest culinary accomplishment.
In case you missed it
‘Legend’: Claire Rothman, Forum president during Lakers’ ‘Showtime’ dynasty, dies at 97
Luka Doncic helps Lakers hold off Jazz for fourth win in a row
LeBron James’ return has Marcus Smart becoming Lakers’ ‘Swiss Army knife’
Dodgers boss Andrew Friedman part of team to advise Lakers in ownership transition
Lakers fire executives Joey and Jesse Buss and members of scouting staff
Hernández: LeBron James’ ‘very unselfish’ play shows he can fit in. Will it continue?
‘The dude’s a machine’: Three takeaways from LeBron James’ return to the Lakers
Until next time…
As always, pass along your thoughts to me at thucnhi.nguyen@latimes.com, and please consider subscribing if you like our work!
