It’s no secret that JJ Redick likes the long ball. He was known as an elite 3-point shooter during his 15-year career and talked about wanting to see more of it in the NBA during his podcasting days.
Now that Redick is no longer on the mic but coaching the Lakers, it’s been a wonder how he will be as a coach and what parts of his game will be mirrored on his team.
It’s just preseason, but we’ve already seen a 3-point shooting increase after just a couple of games. The Lakers shot 40 3-pointers in their 118-114 loss versus the Suns and postgame, Redick talked about wanting to ramp up those numbers moving forward.
“If you look at it, for us and our group, to take 40 threes in the game, that’s promising,” Redick said. “We can get it up to 50, hopefully, But 40 is good.”
Consider it a warning, Lakers fans: more 3-pointers are coming this season.
Fifty 3-pointers in a 48-minute game is hard to wrap one’s head around. It would not only surpass last year’s league-high of 42.4, which the Boston Celtics achieved, but it would be the most ever by any team in NBA history by almost five a game.
Just from a numbers standpoint, getting up 50 3-pointers per game feels borderline impossible, especially for a team not necessarily built for high-volume 3-point shooting. Boston did it 11 times last season, the most in the league, and they are built for that.
As a team, the Lakers only took 83.6 field goals per game last season. Is 50 threes even possible?
It would also be a dramatic uptick from last season for the Lakers when they shot only 37.7 per game, the third-fewest attempts in the NBA.
So far, Redick’s talk hasn’t changed what preseason looks like for the Lakers from beyond the arc. Last preseason, they averaged 36 3-point attempts per game and this year, they have the exact same average two games in.
Still, he has been consistent in his messaging of wanting the Lakers to shoot more threes for weeks now, so if 50 is what he’s aiming for, we’ll likely see a continued increase in 3-point shot attempts this October.
The Lakers are shooting 29% from downtown this preseason, which is far more alarming than the attempts. Los Angeles can be trigger-happy all they want, but you have to hit to be a shooter.
Again, it’s a small sample size and not many players on this roster are considered threats from deep, so Redick will have to find a way to mold this team into his image while understanding what his personnel is and isn’t capable of.
Good things take time, so we all need to be patient as Redick figures out how to optimize the Lakers’ offense.