The Lakers finally turned the corner on offense

After years of badly missed shots and lackluster scoring, the Lakers have been one of the league’s best offenses in recent months and are on track to break records.

Three months ago, the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t buy a bucket. Their shooters were ice cold, every fumbled transition opportunity bordered on slapstick and their shift to 5-out-spacing looked questionable at best.

Despite the clear potential of a potent offensive team on paper, the Lakers were out of whack both from a result and process perspective. They were still two games over .500 but that was largely thanks to their impressive defense — which ranked 8th stingiest at the time.

For longtime Lakers fans, the team’s struggles with scoring and shooting the ball weren’t a new occurrence. It was a rerun.

It’s been such commonplace for their perimeter players to see hits in their percentages that some have deemed Los Angeles as: “The place where shooters go to die.”

Conspiracy theories on why have ranged from the lighting in the Crypto.com Arena, a curse bestowed upon them by the basketball gods or simply the added pressure of wearing purple and gold. Whatever the real reason their threes seem to hit the back iron and the offense tends to stagnate is, it appeared that trend would continue this season.

Or so it seemed.

In the Lakers’ first 30 games, they ranked 19th in offensive rating (114.3). However, in their last 30 games, the team has the 2nd-best offensive rating (121.6) in the NBA. A staggering turnaround has reshaped the team’s identity from defense-first into one of the best run-and-gun squads over the past few months.

The obvious question that should come to mind is how? And is it sustainable?

There have been multiple factors that have played a role in the team’s offensive renaissance.

One of the earliest things the team did in an attempt to juice their offense came via a lineup change. Back in January, Darvin Ham reinserted D’Angelo Russell back into the starting five after benching him earlier in the year.

The move not only reignited Russell’s swagger but provided the group with a (non-LeBron James) lead ball-handler who could initiate the offense and grease the wheels off the ball at the drop of a dime. Russell’s presence also allowed Austin Reaves to transition back to his more natural role as a secondary creator, where he has since rebounded from his initial cold stretch.

Rui Hachimura would also eventually be slotted into the lineup. The new starting five suddenly were weaponized at every position. And with no player that defenses could confidently cheat off of, this created more room and opportunities to exploit advantages.

Outside of shifting the right pieces into place, the Lakers have also been more diligent and effective with their playcalling.

Earlier in the season, the team experienced growing pains with their move to 5-out-spacing as players looked uncomfortable and unsure where they should be positioned, where they should attack from and what holes in the defense to look for.

Since then, there has been a noticeable improvement from an organizational standpoint, which has been accompanied by less freelance offense. Those moments of improvisation are still present, but they have taken a backseat for their sets and series.

The team’s playbook has relatively stayed the same in that it runs mostly the actions and alignments they were to start the year. But the frequency and efficiency have shot up.

There are still plenty of tight pindowns, plays out of “Horns,” and emptying of the corner in their pick-and-roll game, but they have also supported them with more things like “Stack” action.

Stack, or “Spain,” essentially is a pick-and-roll combined with a backscreen for the picker. The setup has become immensely popular over the past few years given the multitude of reads and counters that can be derived from it. It is especially effective against drop defenses as the roller often can get behind the play if the opposing big is out of position.

This was most recently seen in the Lakers’ matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks, where they routinely utilized Stack to exploit Brook Lopez’s positioning on the floor.

Things like changing the starting lineup and improving the process in the half-court have only paid off, however, because the results finally caught up.

After years of falling behind as the rest of the league embraced and benefitted from the 3-point revolution, the Lakers’ shooting has finally thawed from its frozen state. The curse that tormented their shooters for the past decade has been lifted.

On the heels of shooting just 36.7% (20th in the league) from behind the arc in their first 30 games, the Lakers have caught fire from deep, sinking their threes at a blistering 41.5% clip in their last 30. For context, that conversion rate is the best of any team during this stretch.

Perhaps the witch really is dead.

Zooming out, this season’s Lakers — who now rank fifth in the league in 3-point percentage— are growing a strong case for being considered the best shooting team in franchise history.

Individually, Russell is only a single three-pointer away from setting the Lakers’ record for most threes in a season. Nick Van Exel previously set the record during the 1994-95 campaign. According to ESPN Stats & Information Research, the record is the longest-standing season franchise milestone in the NBA.

Beyond Russell, five other players are currently shooting 38% or better from deep this year. That includes LeBron James, whose 41% mark is tied (2012-13) for the best shooting clip of his career.

Collectively, the team has canned 804 threes this season. That’s already the fifth-most in franchise history, and with 13 games left to go, they are only 179 away from setting the team’s record. To do so, they will need to average around 14 made threes per game (they currently average 11.7) from here on out.

The team’s sizzling uptick compared to their frigid start has understandably seen some call the validity of their shooting into question. With the roster mainly the same in both sample sizes, looking beneath the surface reveals the role that luck has played now and then.

According to the league's tracking data, in that first stretch of the season, the Lakers converted only 35.4% of their wide-open chances from deep. That was the second-worst rate in the NBA at the time, behind only the Detroit Pistons.

In this latest stretch, the Lakers have drilled 43.2% on those same chances — the second-best clip during this span.

The true shooting performance and talent likely lie somewhere in the middle, but their surge both in shooting and offensive efficiency in totality does illustrate the level of skill that has been there all year. Only now, the numbers and film have begun to back it up.

Unfortunately, the Lakers’ excellent, and in some cases historic, season on one end of the floor has come at the expense of the other.

The defense has spiraled at nearly the same time as the offense has soared, which has hampered their ability to climb the standings.

It’s ironic that after years of frustration over the offense, it’s the team that is clinging onto a play-in spot that has performed better than any other during the James/Anthony Davis era. From a sheer numbers standpoint, that’s also the case in comparison to any Lakers’ squad before them.

Aspects like the introduction of the 3-point line, a boom in pace, and rule changes all make comparing across decades murky, of course.

But ultimately, this is the closest the Lakers have ever been on offense to giving fans what they have long yearned for: pure, unrelenting, voluminous buckets.

Hopefully, this final stretch of the season shines a light on the strides they’ve made instead of dropping the curtain on a team trying to shoot their way out of the dark.

All stats courtesy of Cleaning the Glass unless otherwise stated.

You can follow Alex on Twitter at @AlexmRegla.