New Los Angeles Lakers center Walker Kessler is known primarily as a force in the paint. He has shot 68.1% from the field for his career with the vast majority of his shot attempts coming inside as a finisher at the rim.
But last season, Kessler began to venture outside a bit more and saw some success. While never taking more than 34 3-pointers in a season in his first three years, Kessler took eight in his five games played last season before being shut down due to injury and made six of them, actually tying his career-high. Now with head coach JJ Redick pushing him, Kessler hopes to continue to expand his range.
“Coach JJ is obviously hyper-intelligent and obviously being a shooter himself we’ve talked about it and he wants me to be able to do that,” Kessler said during his recent media availability. “Because I think, for a big to be able to stretch the floor like that, or even have the threat of it, I think it makes other team’s scout really difficult. Because whether I can do that on pop, or catch on the pop, go second-side or be able to roll. Both of those things are gonna be really important.”
Obviously Kessler’s success last year was on an extremely small sample size and the vast majority of his shots should still be coming at the rim. But he is not wrong in that at least having that threat of knocking down the 3 makes things very difficult for the defense to deal with.
Dealing with Kessler coming downhill on a pick-and-roll while Luka Doncic or Austin Reaves handles the ball is tough enough. But the possibility of Kessler being able to pop out and knock down shots on the perimeter gives Redick and the Lakers’ coaching staff even more tools at their disposal.
The primary role for Kessler will remain being a rim protector and defensive anchor, offensive rebounder and finisher at the rim. But sprinkling in some 3-point shooting will make this Lakers offense even more impossible to deal with and Redick is always going to push his players to expand their range.
Lakers center Walker Kessler gives positive update on shoulder injury
Of course, the reason Kessler played just five games last year was due to a torn labrum in his left shoulder. He had surgery to repair the injury and says the shoulder now feels better than it ever has.
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