Luke Walton wants the Lakers to keep shooting threes, but only if they ‘attack the rim first’

Despite not having an abundance of shooters on the roster, Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton wants his team to shoot the three ball, so long as the looks are good and there’s not a clear path to the rim.

Prior to the Lakers’ loss to the Orlando Magic on Sunday, in which L.A. shot 46.8 percent from the field, Walton said that he prefers that his players look to score at the rim before settling for 3-pointers.

“As long as we keep shooting good ones,” Walton said. “Teams scout to let us shoot threes, so when they’re open, we’ll make open threes.”

“Our guys are good. They’re very capable of knocking those down. We struggle sometimes when we get trigger-happy with throwing threes up. We don’t want to run to the 3-point line in transition. We want to attack the rim. We don’t want to swing, swing, jack up a three. We want to penetrate the defense and then shoot a three. So as long as we take the right type of threes our percentage will stay,” Walton continued before reiterating “we want to be a team that attacks the rim first.”

When you look at the Lakers’ shooting percentages from the floor this season, it makes sense why Walton would rather have his players go straight to the basket.

The Lakers are ranked No. 3 in the league in 2-point field goals made per game (23.9) and No. 7 in 2-point field goal percentage (53.6). Comparatively, they’re among the bottom-10 teams in the NBA in both 3-point field goals made (10.3) and 3-point field goal percentage (34.7).

There’s a good chance the front office will try to address their problems from behind the arc before the trade deadline, but until then, expect the Lakers to get the bulk of their offense from around the rim.

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