Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cAbove all, being able to stay in LA is the best outcome for me,\u201d Hachimura added. \u201cThey support their players of course, their families and inner circles from what I hear. Plus they have a brand new arena with advanced physical and medical support and all kinds of useful tools for physical training. I’m really looking forward to all of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy top priority was winning. The roster construction, the team organization, and their style of play altogether, the Clippers felt like they gave me the best opportunity. Plus, like I keep saying, playing with a team of younger players is a first for me since my time with the [Washington] Wizards. I’ve always played on roster with veterans, so having this experience is going to be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a young team and while the roster itself is young, the organization is relatively young here, too. They only moved to L.A. a few decades ago, so I want to help them build and shape that L.A. culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hachimura originally came to the Lakers in a trade with the Wizards in January 2023 at a time when the Lakers were starving for productive complementary players, especially at the forward position. He had always been a capable scorer in iso situations, but with the Purple and Gold, he expanded his game by becoming an elite 3-point shooter.<\/p>\n
During the 2022-23 season, he made just 31.9% from 3-point range. But since then, he has made 42.6% of his 3-point attempts, and last season, he was at a sizzling 44.3% from that distance. By shooting 56.9% from downtown in this spring’s playoffs, he moved into first place in all-time career playoff 3-point accuracy at 51.6%.<\/p>\n
Bringing him back would’ve provided the Lakers with, at the very least, a stopgap solution to their need for a viable starting forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 4, 2026, 9:14 p.m. PT When NBA free agency opened several weeks ago, the Los Angeles Lakers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[72400,7,6,90545,53093,72522,72404,72934,73765,73519,72843,72932,72546,72413,72689,74191,72693,72444,72422,72405,72757,72406,72403,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":["post-804110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-wizards","tag-accessfree","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-sourcelebron-wire","tag-sstssportsnba","tag-sstsnnba","tag-tagbasketball","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagcgr-sports","tag-tagdarius-garland","tag-tagjaxson-hayes","tag-tagkawhi-leonard","tag-taglebron-james","tag-taglos-angeles-clippers","tag-taglos-angeles-lakers","tag-tagluke-kennard","tag-tagmarcus-smart","tag-tagnational-sports","tag-tagnba","tag-tagoverall-positive","tag-tagrui-hachimura","tag-tagsports-news","tag-typestory","tag-washington","tag-washington-wizards","tag-washingtonwizards","tag-wizards"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804110","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=804110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}