Scouting one-pager: Los Angeles Lakers (LAL)
2025-26 regular season Ā· 82 games Ā· 6,863 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Luka DonÄiÄ is a genuine shot-maker: +12.1 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Jaxson Hayes (1.42 xPPS on 262 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: L. James - M. Smart - D. Ayton - L. DonÄiÄ - A. Reaves (+11.0/100 over 399 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| LAL | League | Ī |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.146 | 1.091 | +0.055 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.086 | 1.097 | -0.011 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +6.0 | -0.5 | +6.5 |
| Rim share | 26.8% | 28.4% | -1.6 pp |
| Mid-range share | 11.3% | 10.0% | +1.2 pp |
| Three share | 39.4% | 41.5% | -2.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 25.4% | 25.9% | -0.5 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.8% | 1.8% | -0.0 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ā .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Luka DonÄiÄ | 1,457 | 1.126 | 0.976 | +14.9 | +12.1 | +1.7 |
| LeBron James | 919 | 1.113 | 1.102 | +1.1 | +0.8 | +0.7 |
| Austin Reaves | 762 | 1.134 | 1.016 | +11.8 | +8.3 | +2.4 |
| Deandre Ayton | 601 | 1.341 | 1.190 | +15.1 | +11.7 | -1.9 |
| Rui Hachimura | 597 | 1.223 | 1.080 | +14.3 | +9.1 | +0.3 |
| Jake LaRavia | 523 | 1.067 | 1.139 | -7.2 | -4.8 | -1.0 |
| Marcus Smart | 476 | 0.994 | 1.067 | -7.3 | -4.5 | +3.8 |
| Jaxson Hayes | 262 | 1.523 | 1.419 | +10.4 | +6.4 | +0.3 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (Ā±ā3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| L. James - M. Smart - D. Ayton - L. DonÄiÄ - J. LaRavia | 226 | 479 | -5.2 |
| L. James - M. Smart - D. Ayton - L. DonÄiÄ - A. Reaves | 188 | 399 | +11.0 |
| L. James - D. Ayton - L. DonÄiÄ - R. Hachimura - A. Reaves | 132 | 293 | -14.0 |