2. Kyle Kuzma’s defense simply is not very good
To be fair, defense is not really considered to be a huge factor when fans determine who makes the All-Star Game. And who knows, maybe Kyle Kuzma gets a wave of support from the fans as a joke and he ends up making a game that he does not deserve.
Regardless, if Kuzma wants to reach the potential of being a true all-star-caliber player then he has to improve on the defensive end. Not every all-star is great defensively but the ones that aren’t great defensively are elite offensively. And as we covered, Kuzma is not elite offensively.
Kuzma has made promising strides as a defender under Frank Vogel but he is still far from being a good defender and this is probably his defensive peak. If he were to go to a bad team in a losing situation he would be starting against some of the best forwards in the league. His numbers would naturally go down.
Even the best version of Kuzma defensively was still a negative on that side of the floor last season. Kuzma posted the best defensive box plus/minus of his career at -0.4. Zero is considered average.
Mix that with his inefficient offense and the advanced numbers are not kind to Kuzma. Kuzma was also in the negative in offensive box plus/minus, giving him a total BPM of -0.7.
Again, not outright awful, but that was the best BPM of his career and it does not come close to all-star-caliber. Devin Booker had the worst BPM among the all-stars this season at -0.1, because of his defense, but every other all-star was 2.5 or higher. Kuzma is way, way behind.