A year after landing Luka Dončić, the Los Angeles Lakers had no blockbuster trade to shake the NBA’s foundations. Instead, they worked on refining Dončić's supporting cast by acquiring veteran sniper Luke Kennard.
While some Laker fans have already complained about the team’s inactivity as the 2026 trade season came to a close, GM Rob Pelinka may have inadvertently stirred the pot some more when he talked about Kennard’s arrival in Los Angeles.
“Clearly, right now, he’s the game’s best shooter, leading in three-point percentage,” Pelinka said of Kennard. “We just felt like the gravity and the space he can create for the group…can really help us on a playoff run.”
When Pelinka calls Kennard “the best shooter,” he’s sort of right. And, in a way, laughably wrong.
If you type “Which NBA player has best three-point shooting percentage in 2025–26 season” into StatMuse, Kennard does show up as the top result. Specifically, the nine-year pro tops all other NBA players who have made “a minimum of 82 3-point field goals per 82 games” this season.
That’s a mouthful, but Laker fans may want a palate cleanser when they realize that Kennard attempts just 3.3 shots from beyond the arc in the 2025–26 campaign. Of these outside attempts, he converts on only 1.6 for a three-point percentage of 49.7%.
Kennard, as a matter of fact, is not even in the top 50 of three-point field goal attempts this season. On the other hand, his new teammate Luka Dončić has a bigger body of work when it comes to outside shooting, putting up 10.3 treys per game. In this category, Dončić is second only to Steph Curry, who has the green light to attempt 11.5 threes on a nightly basis.
While Kennard is indeed efficient from deep, his actual contribution to scoring has a low ceiling, as he’s taking relatively fewer threes. It might be a stretch, then, for Pelinka to use the superlative of “best shooter” when describing his newest acquisition. Still, if Kennard can knock down some outside shots and open up the floor for Dončić and LeBron James, he’d be playing his role perfectly.