To get fans psyched up for a game against Sweden, the Russian Basketball Federation posted a video of Timofey Mozgov draining 3-pointers to their official Facebook page. Watch the 7-footer casually swish 3s as if this is a thing he normally does:
So easy! Maybe the Los Angeles Lakers have found a floor-spacing big man. Perhaps this was their secret strategy when they signed him for four years and $64 million on the first night of free agency.
In all seriousness, it wouldn't be entirely crazy if Mozgov took some 3s for the Lakers. Last year, former Cleveland Cavaliers coach David Blatt said that Mozgov secretly wanted to be Bill Laimbeer and the big man had been telling him for a year that he's a 3-point shooter. Back when Mozgov played for the Denver Nuggets, he shot 3s after practice all the time, and once coach Brian Shaw even drew up a play for him to take a potential game-tying 3-pointer. He missed it.
Does Mogzov have the range? In six years in the NBA, he has taken 39 shots from long distance and made just seven of them. Under Shaw in 2013-14, he went 4-for-24 from 3-point range. It's not unheard of, though, for veterans to expand their range when they need to. Last year, Luis Scola became a 40-percent 3-point shooter for the Toronto Raptors out of nowhere.
Most NBA big men are capable of hitting 3-pointers in practice with no one guarding them. Doing it in games is a whole different story. With Mozgov, though, there's reason to believe he might at least try it.
