Los Angeles Lakers Rumors: How Kyle Kuzma can survive the trading block
By Ronald Agers
The game against Cleveland Cavaliers showed holes in Kyle Kuzma’s game.
With young NBA players, sometimes they allow their offense to dictate their overall game. If this game wasn’t a great example, nothing will convince you. Kyle Kuzma’s weaknesses were finally exposed.
When Kuzma missed his first six shots of the game, he started to press and rush, not allowing the game to come to him. Sure he will make the highlights with this buzzer-beater to end the 1st quarter.
https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1216936377318694913
But Kuzma will have to grow as a playmaker. He’s going to have to make the connection that he can contribute in more ways than just scoring. He is struggling at times making reads in the half-court and it’s starting to weigh on his teammates. JaVale McGee let him have it when he decided against an easy lob for a more difficult shot.
These are plays that his teammates, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso are reading correctly time and time again. Kyle Kuzma has to understand the NBA game by balancing scoring and playmaking.
Kyle Kuzma came back to Earth with just 11 points while missing all of his shots from behind the 3-point line. Not a good look when Dwight Howard has one and he doesn’t.
Even though Kyle Kuzma deserves the lion’s share of the blame, there’s an underlying problem.