What if the Brooklyn Nets had kept Kyle Kuzma?
By Ben Stinar
As part of the D’Angelo Russell and Brook Lopez swap last season, the Brooklyn Nets sent the Los Angeles Lakers their first round pick. That pick eventually became Kyle Kuzma.
Kyle Kuzma was taken with the 27th overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft by the Los Angles Lakers. That pick was originally owned by the Brooklyn Nets. Had Brooklyn kept the pick, it may have opted to go a different route and draft someone else. We’ll never know. What is known: Kyle Kuzma looks like a future NBA All-Star.
Getting D’Angelo Russell was all the Nets cared about, and rightfully so. A team with relatively no draft picks had now acquired the second overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. Magic Johnson wisely asked for Brooklyn’s 27th overall pick as part of the package that sent Brook Lopez for Russell and Timofey Mozgov.
Kuzma was a diamond in the rough. Twenty-six other players heard their name called before Kuzma, who eventually had the last laugh after being named to the NBA’s All-Rookie First Team. Sean Marks and the Nets cannot be blamed for letting the pick become a throw-in in a trade; no one expected Kuzma to be this good.
The real question is: What if the Lakers had accepted the trade without asking for the draft pick or asked for a future pick instead? Imagine the Nets with D’Angelo Russell and Kyle Kuzma. Kuzma seemingly would have fallen into the Nets’ lap on draft night had they still owned the pick. He is the ultimate scoring forward; big, strong, and can shoot from anywhere. He’s everything the Nets are desperate for.
Russell is only going to become a great player if he becomes an elite facilitator. Spencer Dinwiddie can score, but he’s not a pure scorer, he is a combo guard. DeMarre Carroll tried to cary the load the best he could, but being the lead scorer is not his role. Kuzma would have made this team more competitive last season. He averaged over 16 points and six rebounds per game, doing so on 45 percent shooting from the field and 36.6 percent shooting from 3-point range.
Saying that Kuzma would have propelled the Nets to nearly 10 more wins is not that crazy. He may have been a rookie, but playing 77 games and logging 31.2 minutes per game (six more then Russell played per game) while putting up these remarkable stats would have carried a lot of weight. He is everything the Nets so desperately covet right now.
Think about the load Donovan Mitchell was forced to carry in his rookie season with the Utah Jazz. He took a non-playoff team to the second round of the playoffs. While the Nets still would be on the outside of the playoffs, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they would have been much better.
The 26th pick in the 2017 NBA Draft was Caleb Swanigan, while the 28th pick was Tony Bradley. Those two players were the picks directly before and directly after Kuzma was selected. Neither player could make his way from the end of the bench onto the court, and both spent a lot of time in the G League.
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Kuzma has shown he will be a successful player in this league for a long time. Brooklyn is doing just fine considering it got its man of the future in Russell, but the future success of Kyle Kuzma will always be a grey spot when looking back at the deal.