Perhaps no NBA player is in more dire need of a midrange game. Only 15 percent of Ball's shots have come from between the rim and the 3-point arc, a share that ranks in the lowest possible percentile among guards,
per Cleaning The Glass.
Ball could also be shying from contact. He's shooting 41.7 percent from the line on one attempt per game. That is unacceptable.
Hassan Whiteside is embarrassed for him.
The Lakers are scoring just 0.82 points per possession when Ball drives, or passes to a teammate who shoots right way -- 220th among 256 players who have recorded at least 50 drives, per Second Spectrum. He averages only 7.5 drives per 100 possessions -- on par with
Chandler Hutchison,
Kevin Knox,
Royce O'Neale, and other guys who weren't drafted to
run NBA offenses. (That number leaps to 10.3 with LeBron off the floor -- exactly where it was last season, and still way low for a starting point guard.)
Ball is inscrutable -- limited in obvious ways, hard to project forward, but enticing because he's a visionary who cares about the right things.