Will the Lakers’ three-point shooting stabilize in the second half of the NBA season?

Are the Lakers a mediocre shooting team? Or is it a team with good shooters who perform from below the three-point arc?

The answer to these questions will be a deciding factor in the Lakers’ success after the All-Star break, which begins with Friday’s home game against the Clippers.

The Lakers entered Friday ranked 21st in 3-point percentage at 35%, worse than last season’s 36.6% 3-point shooting (No. 14) and last season’s 37.7% (No. 8).

While their perimeter shooting has been a factor in the offense not performing as expected, there are reasons for optimism that their perimeter shooting will be a strength in the final sprint of the regular season.

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The Lakers shot 37% from beyond the arc in their 19 games prior to the break, which ranked No. 7 in the league despite their player availability being in flux for most of that stretch after previously being one of the league’s worst shooting teams (33.9% through the first 35 games).

As one of the most prolific pull-up 3-point shooting teams (12.2 attempts, fifth-highest in the league), which are naturally harder and have a lower percentage of shots than catch-and-shoot 3s, the Lakers will face an uphill battle with their raw 3-point percentage.

But if they can maintain the 37% they shot last month (an average mark) versus the 34.8% they shot previously (an awful number), then they should maintain their recent 3-point success.

And there are plenty of reasons why they should be able to.

Most of the Lakers’ higher-volume shooters are underperforming on catch-and-shoot 3s this season compared to their previous seasons, including Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia.

Even Luke Kennard, the league’s most accurate 3-point shooter, underperformed significantly with his catch-and-shoot looks in the four games he played against the Lakers on Friday.

The underperformance on catch-and-shoot 3s started to turn in the Lakers’ favor before halftime.

And as the team gets healthier overall, there’s confidence that they can continue to be a solid-to-good shooting squad, even if players who have shot better than expected (like Rui Hachimura) start to regress to their averages.

The Lakers have shown that they don’t need high-level three-point shooters to perform well offensively.

They stay elite inside the arc and get to the free throw line.

But persistent three-point shooting can make the difference between a good-to-very good offense as they have been thus far and the elite as they are projected to be.

And they are on the verge of reaching that level.