Los Angeles Lakers: Is their hot 3-point shooting sustainable?

Coming off a world championship, the Los Angeles Lakers have gotten off to a strong start to the 2020-21 season. The team has a record of 15-6 and boasts the No. 2 net rating per NBA.com (LA Clippers 1st). Despite some changes to the roster, the Lakers are again thriving on the defensive end of the floor. After ranking 11th offensively and 3rd defensively last season, the team currently ranks 7th in offense and 1st in defense.

The slight improvement offensively so far — 111.7 points per 100 possessions to 112.5 — has arguably been primarily driven by improved 3-point shooting. After shooting a 21st-best 34.9 percent from downtown last regular season, the offense is up to 38.7 percent (6th-best) through 21 games in 2020-21. For reference, the Clippers currently have the league’s top 3-point percentage at 41.6 percent.

The Los Angeles Lakers’ strong 3-point shooting to start the season has certainly been encouraging, but it’s worth considering how sustainable it is going forward.

It’s not as if the Lakers got red-hot from long-range in the playoffs last season. The team shot slightly better than in the regular season — 35.6 percent — but still finished 12th among 16 teams in efficiency. It’s also worth noting that despite the improvement so far this year, the team isn’t launching threes at a higher rate. 35.3 percent of Los Angeles’s shots have come from downtown (25th in NBA) compared to 35.8 percent in the 2019-20 regular season. This percentage ticked up to 40.8 percent in the playoffs, but this still only ranked 11th-highest among the 16 squads. For reference, the Utah Jazz are shooting threes at the highest rate so far in 2020-21, with the long ball accounting for 48.5 percent of the team’s shot attempts.

To figure out to what extent the Lakers’ shooting is or isn’t sustainable, it’s probably wise to take a look at what players are driving the improvement from downtown.