FanPost

Lakers Outplaying the Knicks, Heat and Suns at Their Own Game (With Comparison to Last Season)



Remember last season when the Lakers' perimeter shooting was a weakness? Their regular season 3-pt FG% was .341, good for 24th out of 30 teams.

What a difference a motivated Lamar Odom, a definitely NOT over the hill Derek Fisher, a greatly improved Shannon Brown, a new backup PG (Steve Blake), a still-healing Kobe Bryant and defensive stopper Ron Artest shooting better than usual, (clearly) makes!

Here's the stats (source: ESPN as of 9:12AM PDT):

The Lakers as of today lead the league in 3-pt FG%, shooting .447 3-pt FG as a team! That's 3% higher than the Heat, and 4.7% better than the Suns, who are in 2nd and 3rd, respectively.

The Lakers have the two best (qualified) 3-pt shooters in the NBA today, with Lamar Odom at .667 and Derek Fisher at .636. Not far behind is Shannon Brown at .533 (tied for 7th), and Steve Blake (.522, 13th). Ron Artest is at .370 (tied for 59th). Although Kobe through the 1st 5 games was at .391, after last night he's at .346 (73rd)

Also, even MORE surprisingly, they are tied for first in 3-pointers attempted with the Knicks at 132, with the Suns third at 125.

For a detailed comparison, here's this year's/ last year's numbers (after the 1st 6 games):

Lamar 8-12 .667/ 5-15 .333, +33.4%

Derek 7-11.636/ 4-16 .250, +38..6%

Shannon 8-15 .533/ 3-6 .500, +3.3%

Steve 12-23 .522/ 10-23 .435, +8.7%

Ron 10-27 .370/ 8-28 .286, +8.4%

Kobe 9-26 .346/ 3-13 .231, +11.5%

Totals 54-114 .474/ 33-101 .327, +14.7%

Avg margin of victory +11.7/ +5.3, +6.4 ppg

So what can opponents do? If they focus on the perimeter, Gasol, Odom (and soon Bynum - hopefully) will dominate inside - and vice versa...

With the Lakers actually playing defense as priority 1, it's clear that (even considering the small sample size of only 6 games) due to this improvement in long-distance shooting, this Lakers' squad is the best in the '08-'11 mini-era!