Why Is LeBron James Taking More 3s Than Ever Before? https://t.co/yjd57CNzmq
— LakerTom (@LakerTom) November 2, 2021
Deep Trouble: Why LeBron Is Shooting More 3s Than Ever Before
Nearly half of LeBron’s shots this season are coming from long range. Is Father Time catching up? Or is the Russell Westbrook effect forcing James away from the basket?
The Lakers’ starting lineup didn’t last even two weeks. Against the Rockets on Sunday, Frank Vogel replaced center DeAndre Jordan with guard Avery Bradley—a move that made the Lakers smaller and pushed Anthony Davis to the 5, where he spent so much time in the team’s championship run two postseasons ago.
Vogel said he made the switch against Houston for defensive reasons. The Lakers boasted the third- and first-ranked defenses in his first two seasons as coach, but ranked just 27th this season entering Sunday.
But with Russell Westbrook, Davis, and a non-shooting center all crammed into one lineup, the Lakers’ offense was suffering just as much. According to Cleaning the Glass, the erstwhile starting five has scored just 99.0 points per 100 possessions this season, ranking in the 18th percentile.
Nowhere are those difficulties more apparent than in the shifting shooting distribution from LeBron James. In his age-37 season, LeBron is taking a career-low 28 percent of his shots at the rim, according to Basketball-Reference. He is also taking a career-high 45 percent of his shots from beyond the 3-point line—the highest 3-point attempt rate in any five-game stretch in his long career.
That migration away from the basket is part of a longer trend for LeBron: For the sixth straight season, he is taking more 3s and fewer shots at the rim. But the changes are starker this season than ever before.
As he drifts farther away from the basket, LeBron is also getting to the free throw line at by far the lowest rate in his career. Like his other shifts in shot distribution, this trend has been going on for several seasons but is accelerating in 2021-22.
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Yet it’s not just that Westbrook himself is struggling to fit in, with career-worst numbers almost across the board. It’s that Westbrook’s uncertain fit is also complicating matters for the other Lakers—most notably LeBron, who is below the league average in true shooting percentage for the first time since he was a rookie.
LeBron is in his 18th season, with more than 1,500 combined regular and postseason games on his ledger, but he has no precedent for this style of play. His shot distribution and effectiveness near the basket are key markers to watch, to signify whether the Lakers can contend for another title with a revamped roster around the stars.
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