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Exclusive – Kyle Kuzma Credits Extra Work Behind Early Three Point Success With Team USA
After finding himself being selected late in the first round of the 2017 NBA draft, you couldn’t have guessed Kyle Kuzma would be one of the emerging young stars of the NBA’s next generation.
The Flint native wasn’t highly recruited out of high school, and had to settle for a more hard working path in order to make his NBA dreams a reality. Fast forward a couple of years, and Kuzma is now representing Team USA as they head into the FIBA World Cup trying to capture the ultimate prize and the first championship of his young career.
It’s not by accident the 24 year old is representing his country, as his tireless work ethic has brought him to where he is today. Even with his promising future ahead, Kuzma finds himself in quite a unique situation, as a key element of a championship contending team but also still learning and growing within the game.
Last campaign saw Kuzma have his very first taste of playing next to top tier talent in the NBA, as LeBron James chose to bring his talents to the Los Angeles Lakers. Kuzma shone next James as others struggled with consistency and health, which led the Lakers to exclude him from any trade packages for the eventual acquisition of Anthony Davis.
Kumza was the most impressive alongside James, however there was areas in which the wider NBA world saw he could take his game to the next level. Two of those aspects were individual defense and three point shooting.
With someone like James, who’s an expert at breaking down the defense, Kuzma often found himself wide open from the perimeter but really struggled to make the long ball consistently.
To his credit, the 6’9″ forward understood what he needed to focus on this summer, and has started his Team USA journey working extremely hard on those two aspects of his game both before and after practice.
Kuzma is 5-for-7 from behind the arc in Team USA’s victories over both Spain and Australia, and after the win over the Boomers, the Lakers forward spoke to Open Court about his hard work paying off.
“Its just a credit to my hard work, how hard I work getting into the gym, trusting this process and trusting all my work”
After watching him closely in practice, Kuzma looks like he’ll be a deadly threat from behind the arc this upcoming season for the purple and gold.
