The Bucks made a big bet but ended up not getting the rewards they deserved

Mark Stan made a "shocking" admission about the Kyle Kuzma deal. The Milwaukee Bucks had a lineup restructuring before the trade deadline, and the trade came with Kyle Kuzma, which was a risky deal. They lost Chris Middleton, a key veteran and core player. But one NBA famous person believes that the Kyle Kuzma's deal will determine the fate of the Bucks in the second half of the season, and he is the veteran NBA insider Mark Stan.

In a recent column titled "Stan Line", Stan reflects on Kuzma's deal and admits that his views were wrong after the former NBA champion's bleak debut in the Bucks' postseason.

"The Bucks came from the Wizards trade in the middle of the season, which forced the Milwaukee Bucks to give up the championship team's main player Chris Middleton, and I thought Kyle Kuzma would be a key figure in the team, but it would be one of my worst misjudgments," Stan wrote. This should have heralded Kuzma's playoff direction after the Bucks lost to the Pacers in Game 1 of the first round of the NBA playoff series. But he did not play any important data. During the 22-minute playing time, he scored, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks were zero. He shot 0 from 5 shots.

Kuzma also performed poorly for the rest of the series. As Stan noted in his column, Kuzma made just 4 of 15 shots in a single game (26.7% of the shooting percentage) in the series against the Pacers. In the five playoff games of the Bucks, Kuzma averaged 5.8 points and 2.2 rebounds per game, shooting 34.3%, shooting 20% ​​from three points and shooting 50% from free throws. In the fifth game, he was released from the bench.

This is only the third time Kuzma has entered the playoffs in his career, with the first two playing for the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons respectively. In the 2020 season, Kuzma performed stably, performed well on the bench, and became the Lakers' third scoring point, helping the team to reach the championship. After the

trade, Kuzma's performance with the Bucks is indeed very stable. In 33 regular season games, he averaged 14.5 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game, shooting 45.5% from the field, 33.3% from three-pointers and 66.3% from free throws.