I maybe one of the earliest speaker designer who used 2.5-way crossover, in your words a decade before you started designing crossovers professionally. Silver 5L was designed in 1992, stayed on sale for a decade and sold all over the world. The crossover on 5L is at 1500Hz. Your crossover is at 2kHz and the design use larger cone drivers.I mentioned that vertical dispersion won't be as smooth as with a 2.5, but vertical dispersion isn't nearly as important as smooth horizontal dispersion, which is excellent on both the stock and my modded version. I've been doing this professionally for over 20 years and have a pretty good handle on the complexities of crossover design. In this case, I had to go with what I was given in terms of driver layout. The object of the exercise is to provide a fairly inexpensive upgrade for the 180's should they go on sale again, not to design the best of all possible crossovers for this speaker.
I am sure you know that if the same sound is generated from two sources that are more than a wavelength apart there will be loping in the directivity pattern. Loping effect is not as simple as what you describe as "won't be as smooth". The wavelength at that the crossover frequency is 17cm. Depending on how tall the listener everyone will hear a different sound!
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