Kyle Kuzma needs to shoot less for the Wizards to succeed

Kyle Kuzma is having the best season of his career. He has blossomed into a two-way combo forward with great positional size, tenacious rebounding, and an ability to make plays on both ends of the floor. He is averaging over 21 points per game. Yet, he needs to shoot less for the sake of the Wizards offense.

Kuzma has never been the most efficient scorer in the league. He has been below average in True Shooting Percentage relative to the league in each of his five seasons in the league. This continues to be the case this season.

This lack of efficiency, combined with a career-high usage rate of 27.5% and field goal attempts at 17.9 per game, is one of the reasons the Washington Wizards are a middling offense, ranking 17th in the league.

Kuzma’s 17.9 field goal attempts per game are the 22nd-highest number in the whole league. It is more per game than Nikola Jokic, Zion Williamson, and every other member of the Wizards. Yet, he ranks 141st in True Shooting% with 54.9%. The league average TS% is %57.7, and a lot of Kuzma’s teammates have above-league-average efficiencies such as Kristaps Porzingis, Bradley Beal, Corey Kispert, Daniel Gafford, and even Rui Hachimura. It might serve the team well to redistribute some of Kuzma’s possessions among this group.

Despite his lack of efficiency, Kyle Kuzma has provided some much-needed scoring for the Wizards.

Obviously, Kuzma’s ability to self-create shots is hard to replace for the Wizards. Someone needs to take the difficult shots on every team and for the Wizards, that has been Kuzma all season long. He provides more on offense than his efficiency numbers suggest, especially considering that he plays some of his minutes alongside offensively limited bench players.

Kuzma just needs to cut the bad shots out of his diet. He can get too mid-range happy and tends to take contested two-pointers early in the clock without much ball movement. His overall field goal percentage on pull-up jumpers is 31.1%, a very poor mark. He only shoots 28.4% on pull-up threes. His catch & shoot numbers and shooting percentages at the rim are much better.

He also rarely gets to the free-throw line. His free throw attempt rate -measured as number of FT attempts per FG attempt- of .193 ranks 173rd in the NBA. Not only is this one of the lowest numbers on the Wizards, but it is also extremely low for a high-usage player like him.

The recipe for success is clear for Kyle Kuzma: lower the number of pull-up jumpers, get to the rim and get to the free-throw line more.

This problem is not entirely on Kuzma. Coach Wes Unseld Jr has to improve the usage rate of individual players and the team’s shot profile to optimize the offense. More pick & pop opportunities for Porzingis, more plays for Hachimura and more shooting sets for Kispert would all be good options.

In Tuesday’s loss against the Milwaukee Bucks, Kyle Kuzma took 28 shots and 0 free throws. No one else took more than 13 shots on the Wizards. This needs to not happen again. It’s both on Kuzma and the coaching staff to make sure that is the case.