Season Review: Cam Reddish

After another up-and-down season in an up-and-down career, Cam Reddish’s campaign in Los Angeles was, in a word: disappointing.

Welcome to our Lakers Season Review Series! For the next several weeks, we’ll be writing columns every weekday, breaking down the biggest questions we have about every player on the Lakers roster. Today, we take a look at Cam Reddish.

Based on his pre-professional reputation, Cam Reddish’s career to date is arguably one of the most disappointing of any NBA player in recent years.

Even Markelle Fultz, who famously tumbled from no-brainer No. 1 overall pick to reserve guard status, rebuilt his reputation as a hard-nosed defender and athletic playmaker on a frisky Magic team despite failing to piece together the full scoring package that had him ranked atop draft boards.

If you think comparing Cam to a former top pick is unfair, just look at the praise rising superstars Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Maxey heaped upon Reddish as an amateur.

Unfortunately for Cam, that reputation has not manifested in a commensurate NBA career. For now, at least — contrary to the above proclamation — Edwards was wrong about Cam Reddish, at least as much as his statement can be read as a prescriptive one about Reddish’s NBA prospects.

How was his season?

The above tweet, authored after a win at Phoenix in the ninth game of the Lakers’ season, followed a Reddish outburst of 17 points. Of his eight attempted threes that night, Reddish made a season-high five and his point total was ultimately his second-best mark of the season, only to be outdone by a single point two days later when the Lakers hosted the Blazers.

Unsurprisingly, the career 32.4 percent 3-point shooter regressed towards his previous average, ultimately shooting 33.6 percent on the season and scoring double-digit points just nine total times in 48 games played.

Offensively, Reddish was pretty much a non-factor, failing to shoot well enough to garner much attention from opposing defenses when he spotted-up from beyond the arc and missing almost half of his shots at the rim (57 percent), an accuracy that placed in the bottom quartile of all wings this season.

Overall, Reddish scored only 5.4 points per game on a Westbrookian 47.3 percent effective field goal percentage despite lacking the former All-Star’s sky-high usage.

The Basketball Index summarized Reddish’s aforementioned offensive prowess thusly:

Despite the offensive ineptitude, Reddish proved to be an excellent perimeter defender for the Lakers, earning him his highest number of games started since his rookie season with 26. With almost two seals per 75 possessions, Reddish established himself as one of the league’s top on-ball burglars and a frustrating on-ball defender. He wasn’t much of a rebounder or rim protector though, constraining his defensive impact to the perimeter.

Dunks and Threes’ Effective Plus Minus pegged Reddish as a positive defender, placing Reddish in the 86th percentile of all defenders. However, his unthreatening offense, which EPM ranked in the sixth percentile, dragged down his overall impact to just the 34th percentile.

Further, what isn’t captured by the per-game impact data is Reddish’s limited availability. With injuries to his groin and ankle, Reddish missed almost a third of the season, and was unavailable in the postseason to provide the Lakers with a different look against Jamal Murray, who roasted the Lakers’ guards that did play.

Should the Lakers bring him back?

Though Reddish is still just 24, his D-EPM was a career-high, and his EPM tied for the second-best mark of his career, it is hard to think of many players who graded out this poorly for a half-decade before rounding into a reliable contributor to a winning rotation.

Reddish also fares poorly when compared to someone who arguably fits that bill, like the beloved ex-Laker Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. He emerged from a poor team context in Detroit to establish himself on two — and maybe three — title teams as an elite 3-and-D wing and probably represents Reddish optimists’ imagined best-case scenario.

KCP, whose defensive impact across his four pre-Lakers seasons graded out similarly to Reddish’s, was much better at filling the gaps as a connecting player than Reddish. Most importantly, KCP shot about league average on some of the toughest threes in the league — sixth percentile openness per Basketball Index — indicating that his actual shooting talent was much higher than his raw accuracy. Conversely, Reddish had better looks from downtown than 89 percent of the NBA last season and still shot worse than KCP.

It is possible Reddish inches towards league-average 3-point shooting on wide-open looks, especially since evaluators expected his shooting to be his most translatable skill, but at this point, it is extremely unlikely that Reddish goes from being a terrible NBA 3-point shooter to a great one.

Still, as a staunch point-of-attack defender, Reddish has defensive utility for a Lakers team with Anthony Davis on the backline. The presence of the Lakers’ star big man allows Reddish to pressure ball-handlers at the perimeter without fear of what might happen if he gets beat. Even if his defense is solid though, his detrimental lack of a well-rounded game makes it hard to pencil in big minutes for him, even if Darvin Ham was of a different opinion.

Will he return?

Since Reddish has a player option for a veteran minimum to remain with the Lakers, and likely failed to generate a market beyond that with his play this season, he will probably pick it up and remain a Laker for at least another season, just like we saw with Christian Wood.

His ability to contribute will likely depend on his ability to shoot accurately from distance and stay healthy more consistently than he did this season. Still, his all-time pedigree and flashes of competency will probably give him at least a season or two longer to prove he can stick somewhere around the league.

You can follow Cooper on Twitter at @CooperHalpern.