Lakers: D’Angelo Russell Still Has Room for Improvement

Shooting Range For The Rookie

This is going to be a big one for D’Angelo.

He’s 29th out of 31 qualified point-guards in shooting percentage — hitting just 40.8% of his shots from the field so far this season.

Shooting was considered a strength of his coming out of Ohio State, so if Russell really wants to live up to the lofty expectations set by those advanced statistical models, he’ll need to improve here first and foremost.

The biggest way he can make up ground is by shooting better from the 3-point line. Russell is hitting just 32.5% of his shots from downtown this season — good for 25th out of 26 qualified point-guards.

The good news is that some of this is likely just a lack of strength.

What I mean by that is that since this was D’Angelo’s first season of NBA training camp, and since he’s still just two years removed from playing in high school, he’s likely having some difficulty adjusting to the length of the NBA 3-point line.

Once Russell is able to get another season or two of proper weight training under his belt, he’s likely to improve on the basis of that alone.

Also indicative of a lack of strength effecting his shot is that according to basketball-reference.com, Russell is shooting 40% on corner threes this season as opposed to his 32.5% from all threes.

Since the 3-point line in the corner is closer to the basket than anywhere else on the court, it makes sense that D’Angelo is shooting a better percentage from the corner than from anywhere else.

Russell was a 40%+ 3-point shooter in college where the the line is closer to the basket.

If he commits to strengthening his lower body this off-season there’s no reason why he can’t get close to that percentage in the pros.

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