When you hear people discussing a rookie on the Los Angeles Lakers, there’s about a 99.99999 percent chance that person is talking about Lonzo Ball. But thanks to Joon Lee of Bleacher Report, we got a look at Kyle Kuzma, a rookie forward who the Lakers received in the trade that sent D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to Brooklyn.
Kuzma grew up in Flint, Mich., and explained that he needed to get away from the various issues that impacted the city if he wanted to pursue his dream of playing basketball, saying he viewed the sport as his way out.
As he told Lee, “I didn’t want to go back there. I wanted to explore the world and explore life. I wanted to have more to life than Flint.”
While he had high hopes for himself, Kuzma didn’t get much attention at Bentley Senior High School in Michigan, boasting offers from smaller schools. So he decided to do a post grad year, leaving his mother, Karri, for the first time in his life, which led to the two of them crying before he left for Rise Academy in Philadelphia.
But the good news is that ended up working out really well for Kuzma, as he became a highly-regarded three-star prospect after that year. His offer sheet expanded to include schools like UConn, Florida State, Iowa State, and Texas A&M. Ultimately, he decided to spend three years at Utah before declaring for the draft this past year.
It was all part of Kuzma’s plan to eventually make it to the NBA, which paid off this summer. His on-court production in Salt Lake City — he averaged 16.4 points and 9.3 rebounds per game during his final year with the Utes — mixed with a stellar NBA Combine led to him becoming a first-round pick.
Kuzma is still something of a ball of clay, and it may take a few years for him to round out his game and establish himself as the two-way stud the Lakers hope he becomes. But seeing as how he’s gone from a lightly-regarded kid from Michigan to a first-round pick in Los Angeles, Kuzma is not the kind of guy it would be smart to bet against.
(Via Bleacher Report)
