Lakers Rumors: Insider Sheds Light On Malik Beasley's Future With Franchise

Is LA's new starting shooting guard here to stay?

Los Angeles Lakers starting shooting guard has a team option to stick with the club next season. Will the Lakers pick it up?

That's what Michael Scotto of HoopsHype and Jovan Buha of The Athletic investigated in a new episode of The HoopsHype Podcast.

"From what I’ve heard, Lakers executive Rob Pelinka has had interest in Beasley for a while, and this could be more than just a short-term thing since he has a $16.5 million team option for next season," Scotto said. "Beasley is loving it in LA. He’s starting on a winning team and will get the chance to play with LeBron more soon." 

"I do think they pick up Beasley’s team option," Buha replied. "It’s just one of those situations where you don’t have the means to replace him. I think, as you saw in Tuesday’s game against the Pelicans, he can go off for seven threes in a half and light a team up. He’s the best shooter the Lakers have had in the LeBron and AD era. I don’t think it’s debatable in terms of the number of attempts he’s willing to get up, his confidence, and his percentage. He’s shot in the high 30s on seven or eight attempts a game for the last several years."

Across his 15 games with Los Angeles, Beasley is averaging 12.4 points on .390/.345/.636 shooting, 3.7 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.0 steals a night. Yes, those are pretty pedestrian counting stats, and fairly inefficient shooting numbers, but Beasley is a high-volume three-point shooter, and teams respect him because, as Buha mentioned, for the course of his career he's made 37.8% of his 5.8 treys a night. This year with LA, his 34.5% conversion rate is happening on 7.9 long range tries.

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