Can Jalen Hood-Schifino find health, success in sophomore season with Lakers?

After a rookie season where he accomplished little, can Jalen Hood-Schifino get healthy and be productive for the Lakers in his second year?

Welcome to our Lakers Season Preview Series! For the next several weeks, we’ll be writing columns every week day, breaking down the biggest questions we have about every player the Lakers added this offseason. Today, we start with Jalen Hood-Schifino.

The perception and expectations of the two No. 17 picks on the Lakers roster could hardly be more different.

Dalton Knecht will enter this with hopes and beliefs that he will be a rotation player. There’s excitement about who he can be and what he can become as a player.

Jalen Hood-Schifino, meanwhile, is not entering the season with any of that. Injury defined his rookie campaign as he saw it both delayed and prematurely ended by appearing on the injury report.

As a result, the part in the middle of that wasn’t so great. JHS never got into the rotation and when he got minutes sporadically, he underwhelmed in those as well.

After back surgery, can JHS find health and, ideally, success this season?

What is his best-case scenario?

Ideally, the surgery JHS underwent late last season solves his back issues that dated back to college. He enters training camp healthy and looks like a former near-lottery pick. The strong play he showed in the G League last season translates into the preseason this year and he finally starts to impress.

Even then, there won’t be any consistent minutes for him behind Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Gabe Vincent, so he’s going to have to shine in the minutes he does get, something he certainly did not do last season.

JHS having success in those minutes would then make it easier for the Lakers to deal one of their guards, likely D’Lo or Vincent, without needing a guard in return, opening up minutes in the rotation for him.

While it’s unclear what style the Lakers are going to play, JHS’ basketball IQ was a strength as a draft prospect and it would, theoretically, play well into a type of offense built around cutting, screening and motion.

What is his worst-case scenario?

Is it much worse than the season he had last year? Now, you can’t account for injuries, but even outside of that, JHS struggled last year.

The jumper was a question coming into the league and he did little to assuage those worries last season. Albeit it predominantly in garbage time, JHS shot 2-15 from the 3-point line in NBA games.

If his jumper doesn’t come around to even just passable, then it’s going to be really hard to find him minutes on a contending team. At that point, you’re hoping he still has some value around the league and can include him in a trade as a sweetener mid-season to upgrade elsewhere on the roster.

But it’s hard to imagine things going worse than the Lakers trading their No. 17 pick barely a year-and-a-half after drafting him, especially — as fans have been keen to point out — who was selected around him.

What is his most likely role on the team?

The most realistic role for JHS this year is as the third point guard and fifth guard on the team. That means there will be some minutes for him, but it also means they’ll be as sporadic as they were last year.

He’s going to have to impress in training camp — which is something he did at the start last year, to be fair — and then carry that over into the regular season. I don’t expect JHS to go from non-factor last year to rotation player this year, but if he can impress in spot minutes and show that there is something there, then perhaps he can factor into the Lakers future, which is more than can be said about him now.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.