leswizards wrote:This season has been awful so far, so potentially one silver lining is maybe Kuzma is turning the corner and going to make the haters (like me) eat crow. He has had 3 good games, and if he were shooting at his career averages for 3 pointers, he would be looking well worth the money the Wizards are spending.
If he can keep hitting the 2pa at the % that he currently is, and maybe shoot 2 to 4 fewer 3PA per game, and get his 3P% up to his career norms or even better, he might begin to look like the player he believes himself to be.
The most encouraging part is that his turnovers are way down. It looks like Kuzma is deferring to Tyus Jones as the initiator of the offense and focusing on doing what he does best as a finisher rather than trying to set people up with difficult passes. Shooting percentages tend to regress to the mean over time, but this drop in turnover rate might be sustainable.
I really think the combo of Kuzma and Avdija at forward can be the foundation of a solid two-way roster. And Tyus Jones has been solid at point guard The problem is the total absence of interior defense from the center position, and the absolutely catastrophic play from Poole. Poole has been the 2nd worst player in the entire league (behind Scoot Henderson) going by WS/48.
Basically, give this team an All-NBA caliber SG and a high quality defensive center, and it would be a pretty solid roster. If this team had, say, prime Anthony Edwards at SG and Miles Turner at starting center, it could win 50. (This assumes that we get 70 more games of Deni where he looks like he has so far this season.)