Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
Also worth noting, in preseason, Lonzo has played 2 games. During those 2 games he averaged;
13/4/5 on 58/63/100 splits, taking 12.2 FGAs and 7.7 3PAs per 36 minutes.
Through his first 2 preseason games, NAW averaged:
20.5/2/4 on 48/47/83 splits on 20.0 FGAs and 12.0 3PAs per 36 minutes.
When you consider that Lonzo was playing basically a lot of his minutes alongside Vucevic and LaVine, both of whom have taken the majority of the defensive attention, and pretty much all of Lonzo's shots have been c&S, whereas NAW has yet to play a single minute this year with Zion and only has played a few with Ingram and has had to create the majority of his shots himself, the fact that NAW's efficiency is that good on that volume compared to Lonzo's volume, there's a very strong argument that NAW was better through 2 games this preseason than Lonzo has been.
Of course, NAW had a rough game 3 and that dragged his overall numbers down, and for all we know Lonzo has his best game yet to come, but comparing them through similar game times (and actually similar minutes played as well) shows that Lonzo's role replacement has actually been doing just fine for us so far.