Kyle Kuzma is just tapping into what kind of player he can be in the NBA.
Recently, the sophomore has been taking his all-around game to new heights — elevating himself and his teammates with newfound passing, rebounding and defending.
But at his core, Kuzma is a gifted scorer, which he showed by dropping 33 points — the third-most of his young career — in the Lakers’ win over Miami on Tuesday.
While Kuzma’s 3-point shot has been chillier than expected this season (32 percent), his interior game has been excellent. This held up against the Heat, as he scored 22 of his points in the paint on a whopping 11-of-14 shooting.
Unlike many others who thrive down low, Kuzma prefers to use craft and technique over brute force.
After the game, Dwyane Wade called Kuzma “a hell of a player,” which likely had something to do with how Kuzma froze him with a ball fake before putting down one of his patented hook shots.
The hook is one of many weapons in Kuzma’s inside arsenal. His floater game has been outstanding this season (62.9 percent), and he has done a nice job of combining that with his ability to run pick-and-rolls — something extremely unique among power forwards.
While most bigs serve as the roller out of P&Rs, Kuzma has flourished as the ball handler — ranking in the NBA’s 89th percentile in such situations by shooting 56.8 percent from the field and averaging 1.05 points per possession.
He made five buckets out of P&R against Miami, while peppering in four of those floaters as well.
His most impressive bit of ball handling came via some nice play design by the coaching staff.
The Lakers then used a counter to that action, by lining up in the same formation, flowing into a pick-and-roll between Kuzma and Chandler, which he finished with another pump fake-hook combo.
“It’s great with Tyson because he’s one of the best screeners in the NBA,” Kuzma said. “He’s fouls a lot, though [laughs]. But hey, he gets me open, so I love it.”
Later in the game, Miami began running a 2-3 zone — something common in college but extremely rare in the man-to-man-heavy NBA. That zone had nearly singlehandedly led the Heat to their win over the Clippers the game before, and the Lakers initially struggled to solve it as well.
But Kuzma played a key role in breaking the zone, hitting a spot-up 3-pointer and cleaning up a miss to bring L.A. back within one possession with eight minutes left.
And when the Heat tied the game with just under three minutes left, the Lakers turned to Kuzma to answer with the go-ahead bucket.
He gave the ball to LeBron — who assisted on six of Kuzma’s buckets that night — and cut to the basket while receiving an excellent back screen from Lonzo Ball, who sent the defender to the ground.
From there, it was up to Kuzma to lay it off the glass, and he delivered, putting the Lakers ahead for good.
It has been a sizzling five games for Kuzma, who has scored 20-plus in each, averaging 25.0 points, 8.2 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 3.0 3-pointers.
And while he had just one assist against Miami, coach Luke Walton referred to him as “one of our major playmakers” of late, as he is learning to leverage that unselfish passing into better scoring chances for himself.
“He’s got great size, so if he can get downhill he’s hard to stop,” Walton said. “ … If he is the ball handler — which he’ll be throughout games — if he collapses the defense, playmake out of it.
“Playmake, playmake, playmake. And eventually that’ll open up your lanes even more as a scorer. He’s done a much better job of that in the last few game.”