Los Angeles Lakers: Team’s biggest weaknesses heading into 2018-19

1. Free throw shooting

It’s an easy aspect of the game to overlook. However, if you take a deep dive into the free throw efficiency of the current roster, you’re going to start sweating like a pig on a smoldering Southern California afternoon.

Before we do that, though, let’s look at how the Lakers did from the charity stripe a season ago. If you thought they did bad from beyond the arc, they were even worse from the field throw line. When the 2017-18 season came to a close, they were dead last in the league after converting a pathetic 71.4 percent of their 1-point shots.

Now for the present. Believe it or not, the Lakers actually got worse this offseason. Although they brought in Beasley (78 percent), re-signed Caldwell-Pope (78.9 percent) and drafted Mykhailiuk (80.4 percent), they also added Rondo (54.3 percent), Stephenson (66.1 percent) and Wagner (69.4 percent). At this moment, the team’s free throw percentage based on last year’s numbers would be 71.1 — a lower figure than 2017-18’s league-worst effort.

(Side note: Isaac Bonga (90 percent last year) wasn’t included in these numbers because he doesn’t figure to contribute as a rookie.)

Holy cow.

Now let’s try to keep this in perspective. Ball, who had the third-worst percentage (45.1 percent) among all NBA players who shot at least 50 free throws, is going to improve. There’s no way he can continue to be this bad from the line. Rondo may never get better, but he wasn’t as awful as Ball in 2017-18. Ingram showed improvement with his free throws a season ago, and should continue that trend in Year 3. The same should ring true for both Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma.

So before you go into full-on panic mode, remember that this is still a relatively young roster with a lot of growing to do. You better believe an emphasis will be placed on sinking them from the stripe during training camp.

However, if they don’t start falling more often, it’ll be quite the crutch in 2018-19.