In Kyle Kuzma’s second season with the Los Angeles Lakers, he has improved in a lot of ways.
Kuzma’s defense has gone from nonexistent to average, his passing has gone from inconsistent to an actual threat in his game, and his driving ability is borderline elite now.
However, in spite of all of that, one part of his game has taken a significant dip: three-point shooting. Kuzma’s three-point percentage went from 36.6% in his rookie season to 30.3% in his sophomore season.
It’s likely that this was just an off year for Kuzma, but it is still concerning nonetheless. In fact, Kuzma shot a worse percentage from that range than Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram, who are not known for their three-point accuracy.
Kuzma has obviously seen the numbers drop and seems to know exactly why, claiming he has made numerous changes, according to Kevin Ding of NBA.com:
“I changed it literally six times this year. It was ridiculous,” he said. “It’s really crazy. It’s not even me changing it. It’s just like me changing little things like: ‘OK, you’ve got to land like this every time.’ Or ‘You’ve got to hold this tight every time.’ Or ‘You’ve got to flick it more every time.’ It’s always something different where it may work for a couple games, and I kind of get sidetracked, and it goes back.”
“Last year, I think I had a more consistent, confident level of my shot to where I’m just doing this every time and I’m not even thinking about how my feet got to land every time, where I’m just doing it natural.”
The good thing about this is that Kuzma will now have a full offseason to work on returning his three-point shooting to what it was two seasons ago.
If Kuzma can figure out the mental aspect and return to being a 35 percent three-point shooter or better, he can become an even more dangerous player.