{"id":44548,"date":"2025-05-20T04:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T04:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/44548\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T04:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T04:32:11","slug":"dorian-finney-smith-on-playing-for-the-lakers-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/44548\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorian Finney-Smith on playing for the Lakers this season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early this season, the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/los-angeles-lakers\/13\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Los Angeles Lakers;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> badly needed a 3-and-D forward with length. It was something they had needed for a few years.<\/p>\n<p>In late December, they finally addressed that need by trading struggling guard D&#8217;Angelo Russell and little-used forward Maxwell Lewis to the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/brooklyn-nets\/17\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Brooklyn Nets;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Brooklyn Nets<\/a> for forward Dorian Finney-Smith and guard Shake Milton. Finney-Smith immediately made an impact and helped the Lakers transform their identity.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>They had been a weak defensive team in October, November and December, but afterward, they had long stretches during which they locked opponents down with regularity.<\/p>\n<p>After the Lakers were eliminated from the playoffs, Finney-Smith quickly reflected on being a member of the team and getting to again play with Luka Doncic.<\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/lakersnation.com\/dorian-finney-smith-reflects-on-first-season-with-lakers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Lakers Nation;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Lakers Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing here has been amazing,\u201d he said in his exit interview. \u201cMaking it to the 3-seed has been fun, Luka coming in February was a big surprise to many, especially me. Happy to be back with my dawg. Just mad right now that our season ended.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finney-Smith had been sent by the Dallas Mavericks to the Nets midway through the 2022-23 season in the deal that sent All-Star guard Kyrie Irving to Dallas. Doncic once again created many good looks from 3-point range for Finney-Smith, and the forward ended up shooting 40% from that distance once Doncic made his Lakers debut.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Finney-Smith has a player option for next season that he can either play on or turn down in order to become a free agent this summer. Among their other tasks this summer, Los Angeles needs to retain him one way or another in order to have a real shot at winning the NBA championship next season.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: <a href=\"https:\/\/lebronwire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nba\/2025\/05\/19\/dorian-finney-smith-on-playing-for-the-lakers-this-season\/83735279007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Dorian Finney-Smith on playing for the Lakers this season;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Dorian Finney-Smith on playing for the Lakers this season<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early this season, the Los Angeles Lakers badly needed a 3-and-D forward with length. It was something they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,247,10596,149,374,1693,967,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,4033,4043,368,4612,6,5034,4611],"class_list":{"0":"post-44548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn-nets","10":"tag-dangelo-russell-2","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-dorian-finney-smith","13":"tag-finney-smith","14":"tag-kyrie-irving","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-la-lakers","17":"tag-lakers","18":"tag-lalakers","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-losangeleslakers","23":"tag-luka-doncic","24":"tag-maxwell-lewis","25":"tag-nba","26":"tag-next-season","27":"tag-shake-milton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114538292464272310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}