Marc Stein makes ‘egregious’ admission on Kyle Kuzma trade

The Milwaukee Bucks took a risk when they shook up the team at the trade deadline and traded for Kyle Kuzma. They lost a key veteran and important piece in Khris Middleton. But there was one prominent NBA voice who believed the Kyle Kuzma trade would be the difference for the Bucks in the second half of the season, and that was longtime NBA insider Marc Stein.

In his most recent column of ‘The Stein Line,’ Stein reflected on the Kuzma trade and admitted that he was wrong in the aftermath of a dreadful Bucks playoff debut for the former NBA champion.

“My belief that Kyle Kuzma would be the difference-maker for the Bucks after they acquired him from Washington in a midseason trade that required Milwaukee to surrender title-team mainstay Khris Middleton will go down as one of my most egregious misreads,” Stein wrote.

Following the Bucks’ Game 1 loss of their opening round series of the NBA playoffs against the Pacers, it should have been a foreshadowing of how the playoffs were going to go for Kuzma. He failed to register a single major stat, finishing with zero points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots while playing 22 minutes. He shot 0-of-5 from the field.

The rest of the series didn’t quite go so well for Kuzma either. As Stein pointed out in his column, Kuzma shot 4-of-15, (26.7 percent) on layups alone in the Pacers series. Through five playoff games with the Bucks, Kuzma averaged 5.8 points and 2.2 rebounds while shooting 34.3 percent from the field, 20 percent from the three-point line and 50 percent from the free-throw line. He was also benched for Game 5.

This was only the third playoff appearance of Kuzma’s career, with the first two coming in 2019-20 and 2020-21 with the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2020, Kuzma was solid, playing a strong reserve role and emerging as the Lakers’ third scoring option as the team made a championship run.

Kuzma was actually solid for the Bucks following the trade. In 33 regular season games, he averaged 14.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.2 assists with splits of 45.5 percent shooting from the field, 33.3 percent shooting from the three-point line and 66.3 percent shooting from the free-throw line.