FanPulse: Lakers fans overwhelmingly prefer Dion Waiters to J.R. Smith

After the Los Angeles Lakers worked out both Dion Waiters and J.R. Smith on Monday, our own Anthony Irwin covered all the reasons he thinks the Lakers should stay away from Waiters. Then, Christian Rivas broke down what he sees as the case for Smith.

According to our most recent SB Nation FanPulse poll, the fanbase feels a bit differently.

We asked the Lakers fans that are signed up for our short, weekly surveys whether they’d rather have the front office sign J.R. Smith, Dion Waiters or neither, and the results were pretty overwhelmingly in favor of a trip to Waiters Island:

It’s easy to see the reasons why the fanbase may feel this way.

At 28 years old, Waiters is about six years younger than Smith (who is 34), theoretically meaning that Waiters has higher upside. He’s also a superior ballhandler, which is an area the Lakers have had issues with for nearly the entirety of the season. Waiters is additionally better at attacking the rim, and likely a better defender (or at least he was. It’s impossible to project with 100% accuracy how so much time away has affect him or Smith, something the Lakers likely needed to try and gauge in both players’ workouts).

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How the Lakers will evaluate both players and make their decision remains to be seen, but it is interesting that so many of you feel so strongly in one particular direction.

But finding out stuff like that and establishing where the consensus is at in this community is exactly why we do these polls (and our weekly thread on the fanbase’s confidence), so if you’d like to make your voice heard in the next one, please do sign up here so that we can continue to get a better understanding for how Lakers fans as a whole are feeling about both the team, and decisions they’re getting set to make.

Agree with the results? Disagree? Let us know in the comments! And you can also listen to our full episode on the cases for Waiters and Smith below, and for more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.