While the Lakers wait on Kawhi Leonard to make his free agency decision, the team made their first signing by inking journeyman shooter Troy Daniels:
Daniels $2.1 million salary is the veteran’s minimum for a player with 7 years of experience, which he will have next season.
Daniels is a pure shooter, through and through. He’s a career 40% 3-point shooter, taking a whopping 10.1 attempts per 36 minutes. He can bomb from all over the floor, offering needed floor spacing as a catch and shoot option and can even do some work coming off screens and hand-off actions. Lakers fans should remember him well enough, he torched them back in December 2016 scoring a then career high 31 points while hitting 6-12 from behind the arc.
Shooting, however, is pretty much all Daniels does. He’s not a playmaker, he’s not a good passer, and he certainly isn’t a good defender. He’s out there to make shots and do it from far away from the basket. Considering he could be, in certain lineups, sharing the floor with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, he’ll likely get that opportunity and could get more open looks he’s used to getting.
That said, with the Lakers roster still so in flux, Daniels’ exact role remains to be seen. On a really good team, you would not expect him to be playing very much — his overall skill set is just too limited. That said, the Lakers project to be a team that has a lot of minutes available, especially in the backcourt. And while that could change once the roster fills out, the uniqueness of the roster the Lakers could build might see him spacing the floor in a variety of lineups.
In any event, if this signing tells us anything, it’s that the Lakers are looking at shooters. If nothing else, Daniels is certainly that.