When the game was over on Thursday night, and the Los Angeles Lakers had wrapped up their 128-125 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, and the last of Lonzo Ball’s 11 missed threes (in 12 tries) had long since left his hand, Isaiah Thomas offered his rookie teammate some sage advice.

“You keep taking them shots,” Thomas said, according to his own recollection after the game. “If you get the opportunity, the only thing you can do is miss. The good thing about it, you can make it.”

Granted, IT has never had a night quite like Zo just did. The closest he’s ever come to shooting that poorly from deep, at that volume, was Nov. 10, 2015. That day, Thomas hit 1-of-10 threes, but the Boston Celtics beat the Milwaukee Bucks going away anyway, 99-83.

Nor has the two-time All-Star ever had a defender completely ignore him as a scoring threat, as New Orleans’ Jrue Holiday did.

“They’re obviously doing it for a reason, and they think that’s his weakness, and he’s just got to continue to work,” Thomas said.

Lonzo’s confidence has ebbed and flowed over the course of the 2017-18 campaign. With less than three weeks to go until the end of the regular season, there’s no guarantee he’ll get his mojo back before summer. Either way, any tweaks to the form and function of his jump shot will require much more work and repetition than he can fit in between now and April 11.

“The next step is him getting that jump shot down, and once he’s consistent with that, he’s going to be a complete player, and he’s gonna be even harder to guard,” Thomas said. “The main thing about that is just having the confidence to shoot it, not shying away from the moment or the opportunity.”

As poorly as Zo shot the ball, he didn’t allow his failures deter him from launching. He took (and missed) four good looks from beyond the arc over the final five minutes at the Smoothie King Center.

In the meantime, as Thomas and most folks affiliated with the Purple and Gold well know, Ball’s game has enough depth and breadth to survive (if not thrive) in the absence of a reliable jump shot.

“He doesn’t just score. That’s not what he does,” IT said. “He makes plays, he rebounds the ball, he does a little bit of everything.”

And when that shot does come back around consistently?

“He’ll be the one laughing at the end,” Thomas said.