Lonzo Ball’s mid-range shooting woes are hurting the Bulls

A huge offseason acquisition for the Chicago Bulls front office came in the form of a sign-and-trade deal with the New Orleans Pelicans on the first day of the free agent negotiation window to land point guard Lonzo Ball. Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley gave up a couple of veteran guards and some future draft capital for the ability to officially sign the contract of restricted free agent Ball.

The Bulls wound up signing Lonzo to a four-year contract worth a total of around $80 million. That was a good signing for the Bulls to finally get that elusive point guard of the future that this franchise really needed.

And while Lonzo had a winning impact on the Bulls out of the gates this season on both ends of the floor, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine thus far. There aren’t many qualms that I have with Lonzo’s two-way performance so far this season, outside of one glaring issue.

That one glaring issue with Lonzo’s game so far this season is his mid-range shooting efficiency. Lonzo is very likely the worst mid-range shooter that the Bulls have on the roster this season purely in terms of his numbers.

According to Cleaning the Glass, Lonzo is shooting just 22 percent on mid-range field goal attempts this season. That places Lonzo in just the 12th percentile in terms of mid-range shooters in the NBA during the 2021-22 campaign thus far.

This is the lowest mid-range field goal percentage of Lonzo’s career to date. Granted, he’s never shot better than 38 percent on mid-range field goal attempts in any of his five seasons in the NBA to date. That also means he never placed above the 33rd percentile for mid-range field goal shooting percentage.

Lonzo actually isn’t very efficient compared to other point guards across the NBA in terms of shooting from anywhere inside the arc. While he has made 52 percent of his field-goal attempts around the rim, that still puts him in just the 27th percentile in the NBA this season.

But this just seems to be a down season for Lonzo, as he ranks around the middle of the pack in most of the seasons in his career to date in terms of field goal percentage at the rim.

So where have most of these problems arisen for Lonzo in terms of mid-range shooting?

One is just the fact that he’s taking too many deep two-pointers that are often contested. According to NBA stat tracking, Lonzo has taken 22 field goal attempts on the season so far between 15 and 19 feet from the rim. That is the highest volume of any five-foot distance segment from the rim (barring his shots at the rim).

This means that Lonzo is often settling for deep two-pointers instead of passing it off to one of his teammates (many of which who are efficient shooters from downtown) or driving it to the rim.

And of the 22 field goal attempts from 15-19 feet from the rim this season, he’s made just four (good for around 18.2 field goal percentage). It doesn’t get much better either for Lonzo when he gets closer to the rim. This is evident by the fact that he’s made just 23.1 percent of his field-goal attempts between three and 10 feet from the rim.

That is the lowest field goal percentage of any Bulls player this season from three and 10 feet from the rim.

In fact, Lonzo is the least efficient shooter in each of the following distances from the rim for the Bulls so far this season:

• 3-10 feet (23.1 percent)
• 10-16 feet (27.3 percent)
• 16 feet-3PT range (15.8 percent)

There are really two fixes for this issue for the Bulls this season. The first is rather simple. Just get Lonzo shooting almost exclusively from beyond the arc or driving to the rim. Good things tend to happen when he does one of those two actions.

Chicago Bulls are getting some empty possessions on Lonzo Ball’s mid-range attempts

Lonzo ranks in the top 10th percentile in three-point shooting percentage and corner three-point shooting percentage this season. He’s shooting just shy of 44 percent from beyond the arc and an impressive 59.1 percent on corner three-point attempts this season, both good for career bests.

Also, if Lonzo drives to the rim more often, he could draw more contact and get to the free-throw line. Lonzo is shooting a career-best 83.3 percent from the free-throw line this season, but he’s got a career-low 0.3 free-throw attempts per game. If Lonzo does drive the lane and draw more contact more often in the weeks ahead than he did in the first 19 games of the season, he might start to get more respect from the refs.

There’s no doubt that Lonzo is getting little to no respect from the refs this season (evidenced by that terrible foul call in the fourth quarter in the loss to the Houston Rockets).

Moreover, the second fix to this mid-range shooting issue for Lonzo this season is to just get him more open looks. Of the 4.4 two-point field goal attempts that Lonzo is taking per game this season, only around 13 percent of them are uncontested. But he’s also draining around 70 percent of his uncontested two-point field goal attempts per game.

Lonzo has one of the highest percentages of contested two-point field goal attempts this season compared with uncontested.

But it seems like the easy solution here is to have Lonzo just cut down on the number of deep two-point attempts that he has and get a few more open looks than he’s getting now. Otherwise, the Bulls need to cut down on the number of mid-range field goal attempts that Lonzo is taking in general.

There are now nearly four and a half seasons of evidence proving that Lonzo is not a very good mid-range shooter. But the last few seasons have proved that he is developing into one of the truly elite three-point shooting point guards in the NBA.

The good news so far this season is the fact that Lonzo is only taking around 21 percent of his field-goal attempts from the mid-range. If second-year head coach Billy Donovan can get Lonzo to take just around 10-15 percent of his field-goal attempts from the mid-range (and get more open looks in the process), then there will be fewer empty possessions for this team.

All in all, the fact that this is really the only major downside to the signing of Lonzo so far this season means that this was a solid acquisition for the Bulls. Lonzo’s shooting is very important for this team. And while he will have down nights shooting from beyond the arc, the Bulls need to cut down on any obvious and avoidable inefficiencies in his game.