Los Angeles Lakers won’t win the title without improving these two areas

1. Three-point shooting

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Los Angeles Lakers’ early success is that they are winning games without shooting the three-point shot particularly well. Ironically, it was Danny Green‘s clutch corner three that sent the Lakers to overtime against the Dallas Mavericks in what was the team’s most entertaining win of the season so far.

Outside of Green, who is shooting 42.2 percent from beyond the arc, the Lakers have not been all that great at shooting threes. Anthony Davis has taken a huge step back and is shooting 25 percent, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has not been a reliable three and D guy, shooting 27.6 percent and sharpshooter Troy Daniels is shooting 28.6 percent.

Alex Caruso and Avery Bradley are also under 30 percent with 28 and 28.6 percent, respectively. Kyle Kuzma, Quinn Cook and LeBron round out the players that are under 35 percent with 32.7, 33.3 and 34.2 percent, respectively.

All in all the Lakers are shooting 33.3 percent on 29.5 three-point attempts per game. That is good for 24th and 25th in the league, respectively.

The best teams in the league and the teams that have won championships shoot the three-point shot well. While the Lakers can win a lot of games in the regular season with their current model, there will come a time in the playoffs where they simply need to shoot better.

Some of that improvement may come naturally as the guys on the team start shooting better than they are, perhaps it comes in an outside trade.

Either way, the Lakers need to be better. The team is talented-enough where they don’t have to be the Golden State Warriors from beyond the arc, but they should still be close to being a top-10 three-point team.