New Orleans Pelicans: How Lonzo Ball can win Most Improved Player

New Orleans Pelicans: Lonzo Ball must improve around the rim

Finishing at the rim

Lonzo Ball is a gifted ball handler who often finds himself in the lane. The problem is that he doesn’t know what to do when he gets there.

Lonzo almost always looks to pass first, so teams often leave him wide open on drives to the hoop, the problem is that Lonzo can’t finish.

He needs to look for his shot first when he gets into the lane and to pass as a second option because it is causing him to miss a lot of easy shots.

Lonzo Ball shot just 57.9 percent on shots less than five feet. To put it in perspective, LeBron James shoots 67.9 percent on such shots and Luka Doncic shoots 69 percent on a lot more attempts than Lonzo.

Even worse, Lonzo shoots just 14.7 percent on shots between five and nine feet, which is about as bad as you will see in the NBA.

Lonzo not only has to be more aggressive at taking shots in this range but he needs to get better at knocking them down. Instead of looking to make the spectacular pass all of the time, he should be aggressively taking it to the rim and looking to finish.

If Lonzo Ball can knock down more of these easy ones, he could improve his scoring average by four or five points per game, which would immediately catch the voters’ attention.