Kyle Kuzma didn’t have great showings in his first two games, especially in terms of the long ball, where he shot a combined 2-of-12. I can be impulsive sometimes, so obviously I started thinking: what if Kuzma’s stellar rookie season had been a mirage? Four-year college players sometimes peak early, so you can’t blame me for having this intrusive thought. Or, worse: what if Kuzma, at a fundamental level due to clashing play styles, is unable to play with a player like LeBron? What if the addition of a superstar point-forward changed the flow of the game in a way that Kuzma couldn’t adapt to?
I was happily proved wrong by Kuzma’s 37-point explosion against the Spurs, which didn’t result in a win for the Lakers (attention future readers, they’re 0-3 right now even though they have Jabroni Lames), but did result in a correction of my attitude towards Kuzma, which is arguably more important than mere “wins”. I was never the conductor of the Kuzma hype train, but I was always a willing passenger, and while getting off at the next stop was definitely a consideration for me, I can say that I will stay a passenger for a while longer.