Kyle Kuzma takes petty shot at the Lakers on Instagram, then deletes it

The Los Angeles Lakers traded Kyle Kuzma alongside Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell and the 22nd pick in the 2021 NBA Draft for Russell Westbrook. After years of Kyle Kuzma trade rumors, he was finally featured in a trade package for a former MVP.

Kuzma’s tenure in Los Angeles can be chalked up in two words: unreached potential. Kuzma seemed to have a lot if potential as a stretch four that could be the third scoring option on a title-contending team. He never wound up being that for the Lakers.

Kuzma continued to be an inefficient scorer for the Lakers and while his defense made strides, he was still a below-average defensive player. Los Angeles did not really lose anything in trading Kuzma as part of the Westbrook package, but if you ask him, he probably thinks that LA got the worse end of the deal.

We can at least conclude that based on what he posted on his Instagram story (and quickly deleted thereafter):

Kuzma went out of his way to screenshot a tweet about the team’s record without him, post it on his Instagram and then delete it. Wonder if he took this screenshot from his burner account and he was searching his name or if someone else sent it to him.

Losing Kyle Kuzma does not have any sort of negative impact on the Los Angeles Lakers.

While Kuzma had potential, the fact of the matter is that the production that he was giving the team is easily replaceable. Once Trevor Ariza is healthy he is going to match, if not exceed, what Kuzma was offering LA the last two seasons.

Kuzma failed to step up as the third-best player on the Lakers and the team had to go out and take a risk on a player like Russell Westbrook in order to improve the team. If Kuzma lived up to the potential that the team thought he had then he would probably still be in the purple and gold. Instead, he is now the second or third best player on a team that might get into the play-in tournament.

The Lakers are not 0-7 without Kuzma because of Kuzma. They are 0-7 without Kuzma because six of those games were meaningless preseason games and mostly featured players who are going to be on the South Bay Lakers.

The one regular-season loss was a game in which the Lakers led most of the way and the Warriors got hot. Sure, Russell Westbrook looked pretty bad in the game, but would Kuzma have been much better?

Probably not.