Vanderbilt, the Lakers offseason player observation, from defensive gate to trading chips, may only have half a season of observation time!

The script about Vanderbilt has been almost written, defense is online, shooting is not available, contract is long, attendance is still low. The Lakers kept him there, only one explanation—they still believe he can shoot open threes at the league average. Otherwise, this account is really impossible to settle.

Let's start with the contract. His 48 million won't end until the summer of 2028, and the Lakers want to clear the space in the summer of 2027. This means that the 2026-27 season is the last full season, either he plays value or the Lakers give away assets. The reason for not moving now is that the transaction value is the lowest; if the transaction is strong next year, you will have to pay the first round. The lake manager is betting, and it is not that he becomes 3D, but that he becomes "D who can make a bid".

Look at the data again. Vanderbilt's three-pointer in his career was 28.8%, with 29% of his large open spaces, and more than 400 samples, basically confirming the label of "can be put". Some people talked about 33.3% of the Jazz's 2022-23 season, but they only made 1.1 shots that year, and 89% were no defense from 6 feet away. It’s not that the opponent doesn’t know that he’s been accurate, but that he knows that he doesn’t want to shoot, or that he can’t kill anyone even if he doesn’t want to shoot. In the Lakers' playoffs, this weakness was infinitely magnified: he was put on the bottom corner, 1 of 11 in five games. A striker with an annual salary of 12 million yuan can only get 1.4 points in 12 minutes of appearance, and no coach dares to use it too much.

The problem is not just shooting, he has only played 65 regular season games in the past two years, and his attendance rate is lower than Zion. Left heel bursitis, sprain of the right middle foot, and fluid accumulation in the left knee, a series of injuries to tear the "fucking-resistant" label cleanly. What the Lakers lack now is stable rotation, not raffle-style play. Redick has pushed him to averaging 15 minutes per game, and he will be injured again, and there will be less time.

Then why are the Lakers still staying? The answer lies in the lineup structure. Finney Smith and Reddish left, and he and Smart were the only ones left on the outside. The Lakers need someone to be able to get from No. 1 to No. 4 to go against Curry, Morant, Fox, and Edwards. Vanderbilt's defensive elasticity is a scarce resource. According to statistics, when he was on the court last season, the Lakers' defensive efficiency was 107.4, second in the league; he was not there, and fell directly out of the top ten. The Lakers are reluctant to give this kind of influence for free.

But scarcity does not mean sufficient. The playoffs are the most targeted stage. The opponent will use the center to switch him to the inside, hit him with the front line, and use the joint defense to force him to shoot three-pointers. If the Lakers want to go further, they must solve the problem of "four-for-five when they get on the table." In this offseason training video, I saw him training shirtlessly and hit three-pointers in a row, but the real test is whether he can pull the open shooting percentage to more than 35% in the regular season. If you can't do it, the Lakers will put him on the shelves before the deadline, even if you can only change it back to the second round.

It is expected that his time window will be very short in the new season. The first half is the last chance to prove: if you can make a shot, stay; if you can't make a shot, go. The Lakers won't wait until the last year of the contract to handle it, because at that time everyone could see that it was a sale. Vanderbilt himself knew that he said in the interview: "I have been recuperating in the past few summers, and I can finally train in full this year." The subtext of this sentence may be that if I can't practice, there will be no excuses.

Summary: The Lakers keep him because the defensive value is still there; if the Lakers want to win, he must score a goal. The 15 minutes of the new season determine his stay and stay in the next four years.