Lakers-Kings observations dispatched!How the Lakers became the worst three-point shooting team in the NBA.More on the continuing issues with shooting and spacing, plus another hit to the vibes after Rich Paul’s latest podcast controversy.https://t.co/FyRZuA2Yjs pic.twitter.com/A08E6BsNBP— Iztok Franko (@iztok_franko) January 13, 2026
FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:
Dark clouds rolling in, good vibes fading
The Lakers are officially in another, and arguably the deepest, crisis of their season.
The first one came on Christmas, when they lost a third straight game in disappointing fashion and also lost Austin Reaves for a prolonged period due to a calf strain. They managed to stabilize after that stretch, but now they find themselves in the middle of another losing streak after falling 124–112 to a hot-shooting Sacramento Kings team.
This one might be harder to snap out of. The Lakers are in the middle of a brutal five-games-in-seven-days stretch, with the real possibility of facing a young, rested Hawks team trending upward on the second night of a back-to-back, potentially without LeBron James and Luka Dončić, who was dealing with groin discomfort before and during tonight’s game.
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Today’s notes:
Season-long shooting woes magnified in one night
Issues that go beyond shooting luck
Luka’s 42/8/7/4 night in vain
Spacing woes and forced corner threes (
VIDEO)
Another podcast, another vibe hit
1-Season-long shooting woes magnified in one night
If you want an optimistic take, you can chalk this loss up to a wild shooting disparity that is rarely seen in an NBA game. Both the Lakers and the Kings came into the night as bottom-ten three-point shooting teams, yet one played exactly like that, while the other looked like the peak Splash Brothers Warriors. The Lakers shot 8-of-36, or 22 percent, from three, while the Kings went scorched earth, making 17-of-26 for an absurd 65 percent.
If you want more geeky shot-making data, which I assume JJ Redick was referring to postgame, the Lakers finished 42 points below expected shot quality, while the Kings were 20 percentage points above.
Dave McMenamin
@mcten
“We had 50 expected assists tonight, we converted 21” – JJ Redick, who added the Lakers “just couldn’t make a shot”
9:32 PM · Jan 12, 2026 · 52.1K Views
39 Replies · 26 Reposts · 531 Likes
The concerning part for the Lakers is that their shooting struggles are not just a one-game anomaly. They’ve been a poor three-point shooting team all season, and things have gone from bad to worse recently with Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura out of the lineup and limited shooting filling their minutes.
After last night’s performance, the Lakers fell to last in the league in three-point percentage, even below the Mavericks, who had been a fixture at the bottom until then.
2-Issues that go beyond shooting luck
The thing is, the Lakers did some things well defensively last night that gave them a chance to win despite the Kings’ outlier three-point shooting. The starting five with Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia opened the game well, getting deflections and forcing turnovers, which got the Lakers running early, scoring in transition, and building an early 19–10 lead. But once the first substitutions came in, the Lakers’ defense started to crack, with virtually no one able to do anything against DeMar DeRozan.
DeRozan torched every single Lakers defender in isolation, hitting one mid-range jumper after another. And it wasn’t just about mismatches against supposedly weaker defenders like Dončić or the much smaller Gabe Vincent, whom the Lakers again switched onto the opponent’s best perimeter threat too willingly. He had his way and scored at will even against the Lakers’ two top wing stoppers, Jarred Vanderbilt and Jake LaRavia, finishing with 32 points on 14-of-19 shooting.
Late in the game, Redick finally sent double teams at DeRozan, but the Lakers’ rotations were not crisp enough, giving up open threes. On a night when the Kings were shooting like this, that was the final death sentence.
3-Luka’s 42/8/7/4 night in vain
Dončić responded with a super-efficient scoring masterclass inside the arc, making 14 of his 16 shots from inside the three-point line. The problem for the Lakers was that nobody else could make a jump shot to save their lives. Excluding Luka Dončić and Bronny James, who made two shots in garbage time, the Lakers went 12-of-43, or 28 percent, on non-rim shot attempts.
Jake LaRavia, Marcus Smart, LeBron James, and Jarred Vanderbilt went 0-of-16 from three combined, with the Lakers also shooting just 2-of-15 on corner threes. In theory, that’s the best shot in basketball after a layup or dunk at the rim. In practice, it’s a shot opponents are more than willing to give up, loading up with two defenders on Dončić ball screens, tagging the roll, and forcing the ball out to shaky Lakers shooters in the corners.
Dončić scored 26 points in the first half and, at one point, accounted for 40 of the Lakers’ first 81 points. But without early scoring from James in transition, there was far too little support for Luka to survive on a night when the Kings were scoring at such a high rate.
4-Spacing woes and forced corner threes (
VIDEO)
If you read my observations after the Bucks loss, or listened to Redick talk after practice before this game, you know that sacrificing offense and spacing for defense, and vice versa, is a real problem for this team because of the extremes on both sides of the spectrum.
I also shared data and videos showing how Vanderbilt’s shooting limitations have impacted the Lakers’ offense, and how that has evolved into a bigger issue with him playing around 25 minutes per game recently. Teams are repeatedly putting their rim-protecting big men on Vando, letting them roam and collapse the paint on Dončić or LeBron drives. The Kings did that as well last night, but also added another wrinkle: a five-defending-four zone where Vanderbilt was basically not defended at all.
I’m not putting up these videos to single out or criticize Vanderbilt. He’s not the only problem, and teams are getting more and more aggressive helping off Smart as well. But the fact is that shooting and spacing have been a big part of the recent offensive slump, and many possessions with Vanderbilt on the floor end with the Lakers being forced into a corner three by a player they don’t necessarily want taking it.
The Lakers could do better by trying to move Vando and Smart around more, including using them in the dunker spot instead of parking them in the corner. The Lakers tried that on a few possessions last night, sometimes generating open looks and sometimes making the paint even more clunky. Here are two examples of each.
No matter how innovative Redick and his staff can be with X’s and O’s, Hachimura’s pending return should push Vanderbilt’s minutes below the 20-minute threshold to minimize extended stretches with poor shooting and spacing.
5-Another podcast, another vibe hit
I consider myself a down-to-earth, rational guy, but I have to admit that when I saw Rich Paul’s most recent quotes, coming right after a tough loss like this, I couldn’t stop myself from having an impulsive reaction.
Iztok Franko
@iztok_franko
Wrong on so many levels…but I guess that is what was meant in the summer with ‘LeBron and his representatives will be monitoring the Lakers’ moves’. We just didnt know it will be LIVE.
Heat Central @HeatCulture13
Rich Paul says if he ran the Lakers, he would call Memphis Grizzlies to trade for Jaren Jackson Jr for a package with Austin Reaves
“If I was the Lakers I would be targeting the Memphis Grizzlies as a trade partner for Jaren Jackson… If you’re building around Luka you need
12:40 AM · Jan 13, 2026 · 691 Views
1 Reply · 3 Reposts · 21 Likes
So I can only imagine the effect these things have on a Lakers player scrolling through their phone with their head still hot in the locker room. I try to dissect this team from a rational perspective and avoid psychological breakdowns without actually seeing the intra-team and interpersonal dynamics from the inside on a day-to-day basis.
But you don’t have to be an insider, although my friend and Lakers insider Jovan Buha did confirm on his recent show that Paul’s comments are raising more and more eyebrows within the organization, to understand that an agent playing hypothetical trade machine with another star player in a contract year doesn’t help what already feels like shaky team vibes at the moment. A sharp contrast to the super-positive early-season stretch, with Dončić and Reaves thriving while playing with, off, and next to each other.