If his first four years in the league were seen as his college phase, Lonnie Walker IV enters this upcoming season not only having finished school, but facing the same hurdle most graduates face when they enter the real world: get a job.
Selected 18th in the 2018 draft, Walker has yet to live up to the high expectations that many had for him coming out of Miami. However, he has produced enough flashes to suggest there is still first-round talent to be tapped. Especially when it comes to the kinetics of him.
Walker not only has the option to walk or run in his setup when it comes to moving around the basketball court, but he can also glide and fly.
The ease with which he can jump out of the gym is a sight to behold. His ability to create space with both the handle and the bob is borderline rattlesnake. And his physical tools remain a lump of wet clay that has the potential of a two-way wing in the eyes and hands of the right sculptor.
Despite the flashes, his studies are framed exclusively in the “University of Pop”, and a Spurs organization known for producing productive players at an efficient factory pace, Walker has left his unfinished assembly line.
The parts and gears are there, but it will be up to your next team to assemble them. Fortunately, this is something Lakers have had recent experience doing.
Malik Monk and Walker have a lot in common. As the 11th pick in the 2017 draft, Monk naturally also entered the league with high expectations. Unfortunately, a combination of obstacles on and off the court hampered Monk’s ability to live up to his potential during his time with the Hornets.
Like Walker, Monk also left the team that initially drafted him in his fifth season, deciding his best chance to breathe new life into his career was to take a chance and make the trip to Los Angeles. By signing with the Lakers on a minimum one-year deal, Monk was banking not only on his skills, but also on his ability to show immediate improvement.
Monk would eventually publish the the best season of his careerand in the process, landed a lucrative two-year, $19 million contract with the Kings this offseason.
Although the $6.5 million Walker will earn with the Lakers this season is markedly more than the minimum, Monk’s gamble paves a similar path for Walker to follow in hopes of making a similar jump in both production and future earnings. However, significant upgrades and sacrifices must be made for him to reap similar rewards.
There is a natural adjustment period that occurs for any player who leaves a communal style of basketball for the heliocentric nature of a team led by LeBron James. How well Walker can assimilate and modify his game within that culture shock will be critical to his short- and long-term success.
One of Walker’s clearest means of doing so will be become a threat off the ball. Specifically, he needs to advance as a perimeter shooter, an area in which he has sadly seen a steady decline throughout his career.
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Alex Rule
As the chart above illustrates, after initial encouraging results, Walker has taken a drastic step back in his converting ability from downtown, especially when it comes to the easier looks.
According to the league tracking dataWalker shot just 32.4% of his open attempts (defender at least six feet away) from behind the arc last season. For context, he ranked 83rd out of 86 players who attempted 150 such shots, and was just one spot ahead of Russell Westbrook (31.7%).
Walker has since admitted that this is an area of his game that needs fine-tuning, but he also didn’t seem concerned about his shooting issues during his introductory news conference.
“I mean, last year, you can look at the percentages,” Walker said, “but I’m not kidding, leave me open, let’s see what’s going on. It’s okay? So, I am ready to show everyone who I am.”
While Walker’s confidence will go a long way toward improving, he’ll also need to make tangible gains in order to play alongside the team’s stars.
As they did with Monk, the Lakers’ best chance to help Walker get to this stage of competition is to redesign his approach and remove much of the fat from his shooting profile.
Last season, 19% of his attempts came over two pitches. (converted only 36%) according to Glass Cleaning – an astonishingly high percentage that ranked in the 93rd percentile among wings.
By contrast, only 9% of his looks came from the corners, an area where he was arguably most successful on the pitch, converting 39% of his chances. Flipping these over feels like a solid first step in setting you up for success.
Beyond playing with the mixture of where Walker’s 3-point shots come from, there’s also value in tweaking how they’re made.
In his career, Walker has canned just 27.7% of his pull-up opportunities from three. Although neither is an elite clip, the 23-year-old has done much better on stationary attempts by comparison, converting 36% of his open shots and 36.2% of his catch-and-shoot looks respectively during his first few four years.
Less movement and more simplification can go a long way toward making you a threat from deep inside.
Aside from refining his jump shot and offensive approach, the biggest area of improvement for Walker will likely have to be on the defensive end.
Although there have been significant advances in the way we analyze and quantify defensive impact, it remains one of the most difficult aspects of basketball to understand when it comes to player ability.
For Walker, however, he is one of the few players where both the vision test and the data agree on his limitations.
Despite his aforementioned athletic ability and 6’10” wingspan, Walker has yet to fully engage. to that end or use their physical tools to their fullest capacity. This is likely one of the main reasons for his fluctuating minutes with Gregg Popovich.
Over the past two seasons, the Spurs have been noticeably better defensively with Walker off the floor instead of on it. And by removing criteria like litter time, San Antonio actually gave up almost 10 points less for 100 possessions when Walker was on the bench during the 2020-21 season.
It’s also worth noting how long the Spurs took to hide Walker during his tenure with the team.
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Bball index
In an attempt to limit his weaknesses on that side, Walker was frequently deployed far from the ball, controlling “stationary shooters” and “roll-and-cut bigs.” In most cases, he was found shot at the weakest link in the opposition.
According to the bball indexthe full-back spent 16.5% of the time defending those “low minute” players, putting him in the 99th percentile in the league.
Walker’s poor efficiency on the offensive end. has yet to post an eFG% over 51 – and messy defense, are key factors in why his overall impact has consistently ranked near the bottom of the league.
Compared to other exceptional mid-tier signings this summer, Walker is arguably the most disliked when it comes to a host of overall impact metrics (as seen below).
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Alex Rule
The Lakers are betting as much on Walker as he is by signing a one-year deal.
There were still other, more established names on the market when they struck a deal with the Pennsylvania native, but the team’s bet on the young player is as much a bet on their own ability to identify talent as it is on giving them a second chance at restoring their careers. .
As with any data that paints an individual unluckily, context does matter in terms of understanding a player’s past and projecting it forward.
A change of setting and role has done wonders for young players struggling to find their footing early in their careers. So does the benefit of having more experience.
Walker should also benefit from playing alongside top talent this coming season like Monk did. Add any upgrades to your 3-d skills along with the looming incentive of a one-year contract, and the change in environment could go a long way toward exorcising the demons of the past to help him become a reliable rotation player.
What steps Walker takes with the Lakers remains to be seen, but as of now, he continues to say all the right things.
Of winning weight In order to prepare for more physical defensive assignments, to take on a bench role, Walker has shown himself to be at least willing to enter the next chapter of his career with an open mind.
“I am adaptable,” Walker emphasized to the media. “Like a chameleon, I can change my environment… I’m just here to play ball, to win, and I’m here to get that chip.”
Although things have yet to fall into place for Walker, this season presents an opportunity for him and the Lakers to pick up the pieces of his past life and build the best version of himself yet.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast at itunes, Spotify, stapler either Google Podcasts. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @AlexmRegla.