Lakers: 3 most important players while LeBron James and Anthony Davis are out

Most important Lakers: 3. Kyle Kuzma

When Kyle Kuzma became the lone survivor of the Lakers’ young core that was traded away in order to acquire Davis, the front office made it clear that they saw him as an important piece of their future plans.

Well, there hasn’t been a better time than now for Kuzma to step up and show them that they made the right decision. Granted, he’s been having a relatively good year overall and has by far played some of the best defense of his career.

However, in the nine games, since James went down with a high ankle injury, Kuzma has struggled mightily.

In that time span, Kuz is attempting the most shots of anyone on the team (15.1) and playing the most minutes (35.1) yet trails both Schroder and Montrezl Harrell in points. This is in large part due to his field goal percentage dipping from 42.8% in the 23 games without Davis to just 39% without both superstars.

Add to that the fact that he’s attempting a ridiculous 8.2 shots from beyond the arc and only knocking them down at a 28.4% clip and it’s relatively easy to see that garnering more of the opposing team’s defensive attention is taking a toll on Kuzma.

Just to put that into context, Kuzma is attempting the 20th most triples in that time span which is ahead of guys like Kyrie Irving, Zach LaVine, James Harden and Paul George.

In most cases, the way to break out of a slump is to just keep on shooting but Kuzma might actually benefit from doing the opposite. By no means is he a bad shooter, but he does tend to settle for the 3-ball whenever the defense really locks in on him rather than trying to penetrate.

Out of Kuzma’s 136 field goal attempts since James’ injury, a whopping 74 of them have come from beyond the arc. This means that 54.41% of the shots that he’s taken have come from deep while only 45.59% of them have come inside the arc, that’s actually absurd.

It hasn’t all been bad with Kuzma though as in James’ absence he’s tried to increase his playmaking ability, averaging the second-most assists (3.6) on the team over the last nine games.

Kuzma has always been regarded as a guy who would put up much better counting stats on a team that didn’t have two superstars.

Well, so far that hasn’t been the case whatsoever.

The good thing is that there’s still time to bounce back. James and Davis likely won’t be back for a few more weeks and the Lakers arguably have their hardest stretch of games during that time.

If Kuzma can produce and be a major contributor in bringing home a win over a top-tier team or two, then all just might be forgiven.