Kyle Kuzma’s spot in Milwaukee just got a lot safer.
With the Bucks coming up empty in their pursuit of Peyton Watson, the offseason picture is starting to settle, and that leaves Kuzma in a much better place than he might have been a few weeks ago. He was already viewed as a possible candidate to be moved this summer, especially after Bobby Portis was eventually sent out as part of the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade with the Miami Heat.
Kuzma’s age and uneven play last season made that idea easy to understand. If Milwaukee had landed Watson, he likely would have been part of that shuffle, too.
Instead, the door appears to be closed, and Kuzma looks set to remain the starting small forward for now.
That matters because the wing rotation could have looked a lot different. A successful deal for Watson would have pushed Kuzma into a far more crowded situation, with trade noise hanging around and overlapping frontcourt pieces fighting for the same minutes. Now, with that option off the table, the Bucks are left with a much clearer path: Kuzma is the one who gets the first crack at that role.
For a team that has spent plenty of time talking up its youth, the need for dependable veteran scoring still stands. Milwaukee added Brayden Burries and Nate Ament in the draft, but those kinds of moves don’t erase the reality of an 82-game season.
Taylor Jenkins still needs players who can produce and hold things together when the schedule gets long. Kuzma fits that description as a scorer who can work at either forward spot and give the Bucks some stability while the younger pieces catch up.
His size is part of the equation, too. The Bucks don’t have many wings with the length to match up with players like Jayson Tatum, and among the options they do have, Kuzma has the strongest case as the most capable answer. That alone makes him useful in a roster built this way.
And there’s another reason this development matters for Kuzma personally: he’s not exactly coming off a disaster season. According to Cleaning the Glass, opponents scored -2.1 points per 100 possessions when he was on the floor this season, which placed him in the 70th percentile in defensive rating among wings. With Tyler Herro and Ryan Rollins on the roster, he won’t be asked to shoulder everything offensively, and that should give him more room to lean into the defensive work where he can help most.
Milwaukee may have wanted a splashier fix on the wing, but they didn’t get one. For Kuzma, that means the starting job is his for the taking, and now he gets another chance to show the Bucks they were right to keep him around.
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Health will be the biggest storyline around Herro from the start of his first Bucks season, because his production has always been tied to whether he can stay on the floor. It also adds another layer to the long view in Milwaukee, where how well he holds up could influence not just the teams on-court ceiling but the shape of future contract talks, making every stretch of availability matter even more. [Read more 🡒]