Anthony Davis is being double- or triple-downed upon by Los Angeles Lakers coach Darvin Ham as a 3-point threat this season.
The big man is following his coach’s instructions through two preseason games, making three of six 3-pointers in a total of 27 minutes of sparse action against the Brooklyn Nets and Golden State Warriors. For Davis, who only averaged 1.3 attempts from 3 previous seasons, it would be a major improvement. In 2019–20, his first season with the Lakers, he averaged 3.5 points more than any other season in his career.
In order to put things into perspective, the league’s only players to receive regular minutes at power forward or center and shoot at least that many 3-pointers were Julius Randle (8.3) and Lauri Markkanen (7.7). Last season, All-Star guards Darius Garland and Devin Booker both averaged 6.0 attempts from beyond the arc.
After making 25.7% of his threes in the regular season of 2022–23 and 33.3% of them in the postseason, Davis spent time with Lakers assistant coach Chris Jent during the offseason honing his outside shooting.
Davis has struggled greatly from the outside since the Lakers’ championship run in 2020, so a reliable jump shooting would be a nice improvement.
Davis had an effective field goal percentage of 53 on 162 jump shots during that postseason run when his team was on the bubble, which was higher than the league average for the 2020 playoffs.
But ever since, Davis has shot jumpers in both the regular season and the playoffs with an effective field goal percentage of 38. According to ESPN Stats & Information, it places him dead last out of 245 players with at least 500 jump shot attempts over the last three seasons.
Davis’ team’s performance over the previous few seasons was a direct result of his outside inaccuracy. In terms of team 3-point percentage, Los Angeles finished 25th last season (34.6), 22nd in 2021–2022 (34.7), and 21st in 2020–2021 (35.4).
L.A. has done better as a team from afar through those two preseason games, going 35-for-93 (37.6%).
When the regular season begins on October 24 against the defending champion Denver Nuggets, Ham intends to keep pushing Davis to shoot from beyond the arc.
