The Los Angeles Lakers have not looked their best in the NBA bubble, as they’re off to a sluggish 3-4 start to the seeding round that, admittedly, became mostly meaningless once they locked up the top seed in the West early on. That makes evaluating what’s going on with L.A. a bit difficult, because their struggles have been real but so has the general malaise of their top players being stuck in Orlando with nothing real to play for yet.
It’s possible all this is fixed by simply being dropped into playoff action, particularly the uneven playing of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but the shooting woes from the rest of the Lakers are of serious note. Kyle Kuzma has been a bright spot of the supporting cast, as he’s hit 44.4 percent of his threes in the bubble, most notably drilling a game-winner over the outstretched arm of Bol Bol with 0.4 seconds to go against the Nuggets on Monday.
That led to Kuzma proclaiming he’d shoot the ball even if Jesus himself was guarding him — which led to some hysterics in the TNT NBA studio — and while LeBron James wasn’t too keen on addressing that comment, he did speak on the importance of Kuzma to L.A.’s title chances.
LeBron didn’t really want to engage Kuz’s comment that he’d shoot over Jesus, but made a strong statement about his role: “In order for us to win a championship, he has to be our third best player. … We can’t win a championship if Kuz doesn’t play well.” pic.twitter.com/1GvxIgCOyN
— Kyle Goon (@kylegoon) August 11, 2020
With their roster situation as it stands, there’s little debating this proclamation from James, but it does lay bare just how thin the margin is for the Lakers even with two of the NBA’s best players. LeBron is always capable of spectacular things in the postseason and Davis has shown in a couple massive scoring outbursts in the bubble what he can do to lift the team, but when defenses spend their energy trying to contain those two, the Lakers could use a third scorer and the most likely player on the roster to fill that role is Kuzma.
What remains to be seen is whether that’s a tenable situation deep in the playoffs against other top teams, but Kuzma’s play thus far in Orlando is encouraging. He has seemingly made some adjustments to shot selection, taking better shots and not forcing quite as much has he has in the past. This quote seems to be both LeBron encouraging Kuzma to continue to be aggressive (in a smart way) when he gets looks, but also applying a bit of pressure to the young forward by ensuring everyone knows what the internal expectations are for him. The next two months we’ll find out if Kuzma sinks or swims — and, by proxy, if the Lakers do too.
