Does Rui Hachimura solve any Lakers problems? Yes, but it’s complicated

24 Jan 2023

The Athletic

The Los Angeles Lakers finally made a long-awaited move to help LeBron James and Anthony Davis and tip off trade season in the NBA. The question now becomes whether or not this was the right move.

The Lakers acquired forward Rui Hachimura from the Washington Wizards for Kendrick Nunn and three second-round picks on Monday. For a team that theoretically is looking to win games this year, it’s a fascinating trade that could either pay off with significant dividends if Hachimura, a 2019 top-10 pick who has shown flashes of intriguing scoring ability but hasn’t been consistent enough and is a restricted free agent at the end of the season, was simply in the wrong environment. Or it could end up not solving any of the problems the Lakers roster currently has.

Let’s dive deep by first looking at Hachimura, what happened with the Wizards and his potential fit with the Lakers. Then we’ll look at the big picture for the team moving forward.

Who has Rui Hachimura been so far?

Hachimura, the first Japanese first-round pick in NBA history, has been viewed as a fascinating upside swing within basketball for almost a decade.

He didn’t pick up basketball seriously until he was about 12 years old. Four years later, he was the best prospect in Japan and leading the U17 FIBA World Cup in scoring as an underage player. When November 2015 rolled around, he had committed to Gonzaga after former assistant Tommy Lloyd visited him in his hometown of Sendai following an ill-fated game between Gonzaga and Pittsburgh on a military base in Okinawa.

Hachimura had his struggles at Gonzaga early on. But once he got comfortable, the tools that made him so tantalizing as a youth prospect in Japan were on full display. During his junior year, Hachimura was among the best players in the country, earning first-team All-American honors while averaging 19.7 points per game. He was college basketball’s most dominating mismatch nightmare that season: too fast for college bigs, too strong for college wings. At 6-foot-8, 230 pounds with enormous hands and a 7-foot-2 wingspan, Hachimura looked like an absolute force. He could put the ball on the deck and use his frame to get to the rim as a driver — especially using a terrific shot fake that seemed to always fool defenders. He’d improved as a midrange shot creator, rebounded well, lived at the foul line and was a freight train in transition.

But even at Gonzaga, there were still some cracks in the armor. Hachimura’s defense wasn’t always reliable. His communication could lapse, he wasn’t as disruptive as his frame would indicate he should be, and he didn’t always hit his rotations. His shooting from distance improved over time, but he wasn’t all that confident in it, taking only 36 3s in 37 games in his final season. And his decision-making as a passer and playmaker left a lot to be desired.

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Lakers, Wizards swing trade for Rui Hachimura: Grades and reaction

I slotted him at No. 17 on my final board for the 2019 NBA Draft. I had respect for his upside as a mismatch scoring threat, but I had some real worries about how he’d impact winning basketball if he didn’t become good enough to be a top option on a team offensively. Poor passing, questionable shooting and unreliable defense is difficult to make work in the NBA if you aren’t a primary scorer. I thought the Wizards really reached when they took him at No. 9 overall. (I would have taken Cam Reddish in that spot, so it’s not like my plan would have worked out much better.)

My fears have largely borne themselves out on the NBA court. Hachimura can get to the rim attacking closeouts, out in transition and posting up mismatches. He doesn’t quite use his physicality to its utmost potential, but he’s averaged 13 points per game over his career. Not bad, right? A couple of times per game, you’ll see plays like the one below that make you sit back and wonder if his time in Washington was just a wrong-place, wrong-time type of deal.

https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/01/24013020/Rui-Drive.mp4

Unfortunately, a lot of his buckets have felt like empty calories. He has a true shooting percentage and effective field goal percentage that have been about 3 percent below league average. In part, that’s because Hachimura has a habit of settling in the midrange too often. The below clip is a pretty good example. He gets a reversal up to the wing and uses his terrific shot fake to get his man flying by him. But instead of driving all the way to the rim to force the help and either hit the easy dump-off to Taj Gibson or the kickout to Monté Morris (or just finish himself if Domantas Sabonis stays home), he settles for a pull-up 19-footer. He made the shot, but the process isn’t awesome.

https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/01/24013240/Rui-Pull-Up-1.mp4

He has taken 114 of his 268 shots (about 42 percent) in half-court settings between 6 and 20 feet this season, according to Synergy. Most of them are off the dribble. For reference, even noted midrange specialist Bradley Beal has only taken about 40 percent of his half-court shots from the midrange. The good news is that Hachimura makes them at a solid 48.2 percent clip. That’s one of the better marks in the NBA. But it’s almost impossible to live like that when you don’t take many 3s and also don’t get to the foul line. His expected points per possession when he takes those shots is 0.964. That would be ranked as the 24th-best half-court offense in the league. There is a time and place when those shots are the best ones available; I’m just not sure he has the right balance. And as a self-creator, I don’t think Hachimura has a strong enough first step, tight enough handle or fluidity through his hips to be able to consistently create efficient shots at the basket himself. It’s too easy for defenders to recover back to him even after he gets an advantage. He’s better when you can bend a defense for him ahead of time.

Hachimura also has been among the most pass-averse non-centers in the NBA over the last three years. Among the 124 players listed as a forward on the NBA Advanced Stats site who play 20 minutes per game and have played at least 20 games this season, Hachimura ranks 106th in potential assists per minute on the court. The combination of not passing in addition to being very midrange-heavy leads to maddening possessions such as the one below, where Hachimura just decides to put his head down with 15 seconds left on the shot clock and drive into the brick house known as Julius Randle.

https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/01/24015200/Rui-bad-pull-up.mp4

The Wizards’ net rating as a team was consistently worse with Hachimura on the floor than when he was off it, according PBPStats.com. This season, it’s by about six points. And it’s hard to make the case that it’s because Hachimura wasn’t playing with his best teammates when he was coming off the bench. In the 205 minutes he played with Beal, the team had a minus-11 net rating. The Wizards won their minutes with Beal and without Hachimura on the court by about five points per 100 possessions. Hachimura’s most common teammate this season has been Kyle Kuzma, who is having a terrific year. When Kuzma was on the court without Hachimura, the team won its minutes by two points per 100. When they were out there together, the Wizards lost by half of a point per 100. This effect also exists when Hachimura was out there with Kristaps Porziņģis.

This next effect also goes back to 2020-21, when Russell Westbrook was on the Wizards. Lineups with Hachimura and Westbrook got beaten by about four points per 100. Lineups with Westbrook alone actually outscored their opponents by 1.7 points per 100. Even adding Beal to lineups with Westbrook and Hachimura, the Wizards still lost those minutes by about four points per 100. And lineups with Westbrook and Beal without Hachimura also outscored their opponents. The Athletic’s Fred Katz — former Wizards beat writer — noted on The Athletic NBA Show that Westbrook did the best job of anyone in Washington of bringing out Hachimura’s aggressiveness and physicality. But even then, the results did not bear out on the court.

There is a real case Hachimura’s game just doesn’t accentuate or amplify the things great players in the NBA do best. In theory, that’s a problem with when you’re going to a team with James and Davis. But there are two things he actually provides that the Lakers do need.

What does Hachimura bring to L.A.?

The good news is that Hachimura is huge, and Los Angeles desperately needs size at the three and four spots. Many of the team’s most common lineups feature three-guard trios, featuring players such as Westbrook, Austin Reaves, Dennis Schröder, Patrick Beverley and Lonnie Walker IV. They’re a below-average rebounding team and don’t force any turnovers, and it feels like the defense is not as disruptive as it should be because the gaps and spaces for opposing teams driving are just a little bit longer.

Hachimura is not an awesome defender necessarily, but he should at least help realign lineups that are in real need of size. And moreover, the Lakers could really use a frontcourt scoring option. Beyond James and Davis, they don’t really have anyone with actual size who can score outside of Thomas Bryant — a serviceable backup big who spaces the floor but not one who is out there creating his own shot. When one of Davis or James are off the court or out, there are possessions available for someone to come in and create shots, potentially more than there were in Washington because of how limited the Lakers’ depth is. As noted previously, Hachimura has his limitations in regard to being a true self-creator, but even just the threat of his offense if the opposing team is already in rotation and scrambling should bring less help from his own man than someone like Juan Toscano-Anderson or Wenyen Gabriel.

As with most role players playing next to James, whether or not Hachimura has potential to be useful in the playoffs is going to come down to his 3-point shooting. And on that front, I’m not a believer. If you look at the numbers from purely a surface level, you can come up with reasons to buy into him. But anything deeper than that, and the numbers get ugly.

Hachimura has hit 83 of his 205 catch-and-shoot 3s over the last two years. That’s 40.4 percent. In theory, that’s good and presents the potential for upside. However, if defenders guard him closely at all, the numbers drop. Hachimura has made just 35 percent of his 3s with defenders within 6 feet of him over the last two years, and this season that number tanks all the way to 23.1 percent. His overall two-year numbers off the catch are really lifted by what seems to be an outlier performance last season. He made 47 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s last year. In none of his other three seasons has he made more than 33 percent, and he isn’t taking enough volume for it to really make a difference.

Teams fairly consistently are willing to help off him, then recover out to his shot. It’s part of why his pump fake is so effective. Typically defenders are closing out from farther away against him and have more ground to cover in a short period of time. But also, it takes a long time for him to actually get the shot off when he decides to take it, allowing defenders to close out on him. Below is a prime example against the Knicks. Hachimura gets a wide open 3 from the top of the key because Randle is helping down onto Porziņģis in the middle of the floor. But it takes Hachimura forever to load into it, allowing Randle to recover back and contest it.

https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/01/24054709/Hachimura-3.mp4

With that load-up, saying Hachimura should just up his volume with ease once he gets to Los Angeles because he’s playing with Westbrook and James isn’t exactly as simple as it sounds. He’ll have to speed things up if that’s the case, and that’s just not really an optimal strategy for him. If he can’t get 3s up at volume and his release is slow enough for his defender to help off him further and still get a contest, it’ll be really hard to make it work with James in the playoffs. Hachimura only takes about 27 percent of his shots from behind the 3-point line, a low percentage for a wing/forward.

There’s another part of Hachimura’s shot that I think is worth pointing out, and it’s a big part of his inconsistency as a shooter. His shooting base doesn’t always look the same from one shot to the next. Look at his feet on these three stills below. All three come from the same game against the Knicks on Jan. 12.

On the left, his feet are basically shoulder-width apart. In the middle, they’re really close together and inside his shoulders. On the right, his right foot is outside of shoulder-width apart. In all of them, his balance looks entirely different.

Obviously, the NBA moves so fast that it’s hard to get your feet down and ready to fire. But the best shooters will tell you that shooting starts from the ground up. It’s where your rhythm starts. And many of Hachimura’s misses end up looking like pretty ugly, out-of-rhythm shots that miss in a lot of different directions. It’s hard for me to believe someone who is this disparate in terms of his base from one shot to the next is going to have a ton of consistency in the moments that matter most. That’s where Hachimura should start working on his shot to improve his chances to stick around. Get his shooting base consistent from one shot to the next. But that’s an offseason, not midseason, fix..

Does this make sense for the Lakers?

Hachimura is an upgrade for the Lakers within their forward rotation because they were getting sub-replacement level performances from a few guys. But Hachimura is in no way a proven commodity at this point and has some real limitations that have serious potential to hold him back from contributing in a meaningful way at the highest levels.

So yes, he’ll help, and the price is not unreasonable, even though I think I’m less of a believer that he has some significant upside from being in the wrong situation at the wrong time. But even if you buy that, Hachimura alone doesn’t push the Lakers over the top this year. They need to make another move. Given that, they do have more to consider when assessing if this was the right call.

The Lakers are operating at a real deficit when it comes to trade capital. They can only move their 2027 and 2029 first-rounders. Following this deal, they now only have their own second-rounder this year, what will likely be a low Memphis Grizzlies second-rounder in 2024 and their own 2025 and 2027 second-rounders. On top of that, this isn’t a team overloaded with terrific young players. I would think teams out there are interested in Max Christie but likely not at a level worthy of a first-round pick. Reaves probably could return something valuable, but trading him when he’s turned into a big part of what is already a light rotation depth-wise seems like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

This is why the Lakers really need to consider opportunity cost when making every decision right now. It’s not as simple as, “Rui Hachimura is worth three second-rounders.” It’s, “Is Rui Hachimura the best we can do with these second-rounders?”

The team does have some contractual flexibility in terms of movable assets, such as Beverley’s $13 million deal or even Westbrook’s monster expiring contract. Are we sure this is the one the Lakers needed to do right now, as opposed to waiting until closer to the deadline when prices potentially drop on some of the other players you’re chasing? Given the relative lack of wing size on the market and the way those players tend to be priced, I think it’s a reasonable decision. Having said that, the team does need to avoid falling into traps this summer if things don’t totally work out as planned.

Hachimura’s impending restricted free agency status does complicate their own salary-cap picture if they choose to allow it. There is apparently some preliminary interest in extending this relationship beyond this season, according to ESPN. To retain Hachimura’s restricted free agency rights, the Lakers need to offer him a nearly $8.5 million qualifying offer. If they choose to keep him on their books, he counts for an $18.8 million cap hold. For a team with potentially significant salary-cap space this summer as the Westbrook contract comes off the books — they could end up around $35 million in space depending on decisions the team makes with some of its other free agents — that cap hold or the contract they sign Hachimura to could substantially alter plans.

This seems like a wait-and-see situation to me, where maybe it makes sense for Hachimura to stick around, but they shouldn’t be mentally committed to it now. He still has a lot to prove, and the level he showed in Washington is not worth wrecking their flexibility.

Maybe Hachimura really helps and they need to keep him. Maybe he ends up playing a relatively useful role and the team just keeps him for around $10 million a year, then uses around $25 million of space. Or maybe the commitment just ends after this season. But it’s worth noting this deal has potential long-term implications for the Lakers beyond how it could impact the next few months.