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Montrezl Harrell on Lakers' new offensive focus with new-look roster
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- Montrezl Harrell on Lakers' new offensive focus with new-look roster
Some people seem to strongly dislike the personnel moves the Los Angeles Lakers have made this summer. They feel the team will be a big disappointment this season and that it has hardly addressed its needs, let alone made the moves it made with any rhyme or reason.
But others are more optimistic about the Lakers' roster and chances of making noise this season. There is even a feeling that there is a definite strategy behind how the franchise has remodeled its roster after losing LeBron James , Marcus Smart and several other starters and rotation players.
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Montrezl Harrell , a forward who spent the 2020-21 season with the Lakers, falls into the second category. He told Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson that he feels the Lakers have a clear plan as far as how they will operate offensively with their new-look roster.
"The NBA right now is about who complements whose game," Harrell wrote. "The Lakers are a completely different team than they were last year or two to three years ago when AD ( Anthony Davis ) was on the team. I think they are trying to turn themselves into more of a long-range shooting team as opposed to the older Lakers teams that had a dominant inside presence. The moves they've made are more about spacing the floor and shooting the ball from the bigger positions."
Los Angeles certainly has a bit more 3-point shooting than it did last season when it ranked 14th in 3-point shooting percentage and 24th in 3-point attempts. In Sandro Mamukelashvili , it has a hybrid power forward/center who is a legitimate outside shooting threat, and new starting center Walker Kessler started to experiment with shooting treys in the five games he played last season before undergoing shoulder surgery.
The Lakers have never really been an elite 3-point shooting team. Even when they won the NBA championship during the 2019-20 season, they ranked in the bottom third of the league in 3-point accuracy and 3-point attempts. Perhaps they're finally getting with the times and will have the personnel to consistently give Luka Doncic and Austin reaves plenty of room to do their damage.
This article originally appeared on Lakers Wire: Montrezl Harrell on Lakers' new offensive focus with new-look roster
