The Los Angeles Lakers have had to rely more heavily on two-way center Christian Koloko than anyone had anticipated when the 2024-25 season began. L.A. signed Koloko to a two-way deal hoping that he could be a development project for the South Bay Lakers after missing the entirety of last season due to blood clot issues.
But injuries to Christian Wood and Jaxson Hayes at the same time as Koloko’s clearance to return to basketball from the NBA made him the Lakers’ only backup center behind Anthony Davis. He’s played in over 10 minutes in eight of his 14 games with the Lakers, and has barely had any time to develop in South Bay as was intended.
But with the Lakers having a four-day gap in their schedule due to the Emirates NBA Cup, that gave Koloko a chance to spend two games with South Bay. And in those two games, he began experimenting with shooting the 3-pointer. Specifically, he took five 3-pointers in two games and spoke about why the South Bay coaches are encouraging that.
“Yeah, definitely,” Koloko said when he was asked if the coaches are encouraging him to shoot 3s. “I’ve been working on my shot. I feel like I have a pretty good shot. I haven’t shot it in any games or anything like that but yeah, when I’m down there in the G, the coaching staff, they want me to shoot it. Sometimes they run plays for me to shoot the ball. So I just gotta continue to work on it and I just gotta make it basically. So it’s on my side right now.”
Koloko also added how nice it is to have coaches who want him to do more than just the traditional big man concepts.
“It makes you feel good. When you’re a big man, most of the time you just set screens, roll and do all that. Sometimes you wanna do all the little stuff too, so just having somebody that wants me to shoot 3s, that’s good.”
If the Lakers are able to use their development program to give Koloko a game-worthy 3-point shot, that could add another layer of depth to the Lakers offense. Koloko is not expected to get big minutes when Wood and Hayes return to the lineup, but their injuries have left them sidelined with very little clarity on a return date.
When the Lakers return to play on Friday night, there’s a chance they have Koloko in spot-up situations based on his time in South Bay, although he still has a long way to go for that shot to be something the organization has any sort of confidence in.
Lakers’ Jaxson Hayes’ return date remains unclear
The Lakers have been dealing with a multitude of injuries and one of the more important has been to Jaxson Hayes. The Lakers are already thin in the frontcourt behind Anthony Davis and Hayes has really come into his own, thriving in his role as an active and energetic rim-running big man.
Hayes has only suited up once since Nov. 10 when he re-aggravated his ankle injury in his first game back against the Phoenix Suns. With the Lakers having some time off there was some hope that he could be back soon, but head coach JJ Redick had no update on his status.
“No update on Jaxson,” Redick said after practice on Wednesday. “His sort of target return date is in flux. If we have something, we’ll give it to you.”
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