The close bond shared by Kyle Kuzma and Lonzo Ball is on display during pregame banter in front of their side-by-side lockers and half-court shooting contests at practice. They live only a mile apart in Marina del Rey, though Kuzma joked Wednesday that the pair had not yet carpooled to practice.
“He don’t want to pick me up,” Kuzma said. “He usually has a full car at practice. Brings the entourage.”
As Kuzma teased, Ball rolled his eyes.
The pair’s chemistry is reflected on the floor, as well. Coach Luke Walton said before the Lakers’ game against Washington that he is searching for opportunities to pair the pals on the floor more often. Although, the more he looked at that, he realized that was true of everyone.
“The way Julius was rolling to the basket in the fourth quarter (on Sunday),” Walton said, “I’d like to get them some minutes together. You could go down the line. … I’d like to keep Brook and Lonzo in together.”
The problem with achieving all of those wishes should by now be obvious.
“A lot of those guys are overlapping positions,” Walton lamented, “and we’re not going to play Lonzo 48 minutes.”
Corey Brewer has often compared playing with Ball to his days alongside Andre Miller in Denver and Jason Kidd in Dallas.
“He makes the game easier for you,” Brewer said. “When you’ve got a guy like that who’s going to get you the ball in the right spots, the game comes easy so you want to play with him.”
Kuzma said he and Ball click so well on the floor because they are both comfortable playing fast.
“He likes to push the pace on offense in transition,” Kuzma said. “I’m usually one of the first ones down the floor, (it leads to) just easy baskets like that. We’ve had good chemistry since summer league, just playing with each other.”
The 27th pick in June’s draft, acquired along with Brook Lopez in the D’Angelo Russell deal, Kuzma has looked comfortable regardless of who he shares the floor with. In his first three games, he averaged 14.7 points while shooting 60.7 percent from the floor.
In some ways, he has been surprised by his own NBA success, saying it has been “easier than what I thought, yes, but at the same time it’s hard, too.”
“I’m a pretty smart basketball player,” said Kuzma, who played three years of college at Utah. “I pick up on things easily, but you’re still playing against the best players in the world and you have to guard those guys.”