Los Angeles Lakers: Five bold predictions for next season

Prediction number four: Kyle Kuzma will average more points than LeBron James

Kyle Kuzma will average 24 points per game next season and LeBron James will average 22 PPG next year.

There’s two reasons why:

Reason #1

LeBron James has said many times throughout his career that he isn’t a scorer. He thinks of himself as a great distributor who’s been forced to score in volume during the course of his basketball life so that whichever team he’s playing for wins.

However, next season he won’t have to score for the Lakers to win because Rob Pelinka has surrounded him with a group of great shooters. Also, he’ll finally get a chance next year to show off his point guard skills in a power forwards body for close to 30 minutes per game.

Reason #2

Kyle Kuzma’s going to blow up next season. Towards the end of last season “Kuz” went on record saying that he changed his 3-point shooting stroke six times during the course of the year. With that knowledge in hand, it’s amazing he managed to hit 30% of his shots from deep. Kuzma will remedy his long distance shot this summer under the tutelage of renowned shooting coach, “Lethal Shooter,” whom he hired as his personal shooting coach a few weeks ago.

Additionally, Kyle Kuzma suffered from a sophomore slump last season and he still managed to average 19 points per game. His second year decline in efficiency is behind him.

Finally, every opponent is going to focus on stopping LeBron James and Anthony Davis while also keeping a man on Danny Green and tagging JaVale McGee (or DeMarcus Cousins if he ends up starting) as he crashes towards the rim for offensive rebounds and put backs. That’s going to leave Kyle Kuzma as the starter who teams will be forced to leave open if they have to send help to break up LeBron James and Anthony Davis pick and rolls.

Kyle Kuzma won’t shy away from opportunities to score. Look for his 3-point percentage to jump up toward 38% and also look for him to explode toward the rim on late close outs.

Next season Kyle Kuzma is going to show everyone in the NBA why he’s the only member of the young core left on the Lakers.