After losing their ninth straight game on Friday night, the Los Angeles Lakers are starting to make some moves to begin turning things around. The first was the release of veteran center Andrew Bogut before his contract became fully guaranteed.
Though the big man had done relatively well, letting him go will open up some spot minutes for one of the Lakers other young centers. It also creates an open roster spot that will allow them to target some other needs.
Chief among those is shooting, and according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Lakers plan to aggressively pursue some shooting help for their open roster spot in the form of a 10-day contract:
With roster spot opened, Lakers plan to be aggressive in finding some shooting on a 10-day contract among available pool of players, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 6, 2018
Going this route makes perfect sense as the Lakers obviously need to improve their accuracy from deep. They currently rank dead last in both 3-point and free throw percentage.
Only two players on the team shoot better than 35 percent from deep, and they’re both rookies, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart. Things are even worse from the free throw line as the lone player shooting over 80 percent is Tyler Ennis, who has only taken 14 free throws this season.
Getting a player who can consistently stretch the floor will really open things up for a Lakers offense that has struggled for much of the season. Most importantly is that it would open up the paint for players like Brandon Ingram and Julius Randle to attack.
Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka previously acknowledged the team’s need to improve their shooting, and said it was a deficiency the front office was mindful of addressing.
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