Last year, his third season in Washington, Kyle Kuzma undertook a bigger role with the Wizards than he had during his seven-year NBA career, setting a career-high in usage rate (29.7 percent) and that coincided with his most efficient season on the court (15.7 PER).
"Every day you gotta come in," Kuzma told Craig Hoffman recently about taking the lessons of last year's bigger role into the 2024-25 NBA season. "You can't be blah, you can't just be laid back coming into practice after losing two in a row. You can't just be chilling, from a standpoint of, talking and communicating, being there.
"My work ethic is always high and I'm always very serious about my craft and trying to improve and being professional. Every day is a new day, but you have to remain the same at the same time. And keeping the same energy at all times is I think very, very important."
The forward said that makes him "very, very excited for this year because everything I didn't know, I do know now."
"And I think that [knowledge] is gonna really help me out individually and collectively as a team, because I'm here, I'm here for my teammates, I'm here for D.C.," Kuzma told Hoffman. "And I'm here to continue to build what everybody here is trying to build."
On the season, a rough one for the Wizards as a group, Kuzma set a career-high in points at 22.2 per game on 46.3 percent shooting (33.6 percent from three) with 6.6 rebounds and 4.2 assists (a career-high) in 32.6 minutes per night over 70 games.
And that is with the added workload mentally of having to make more and more decisions on the court. While Kuzma called it a very important part but called his past comments about the increased mental strain "an excuse" as he looked back at it over the summer.
"Just effin do it, you know what I mean," he told Hoffman. "You gotta be, Kobe Bryant terms, 'same animal different beasts.' I feel like at the end of the day everything is just a mindset, just go get it done. I think that this offseason I'm in a different mental space and I'm very excited to go out and play."
And part of that was getting together with teammates in Florida and in California with Jordan Poole. "You kinda gotta keep the engine light on, you gotta connect in the offseason, hang out, that's the biggest thing, it's not really about getting in the gym," Kuzma said about taking some time away from co-workers who they'll spend the next several months with, but also connecting on a personal level to form some good team bonds.
And that helps with some of the new faces in Washington like Malcolm Brogdon – "professionalism and competitiveness" – and Jonas Valanciunas – "a load... most excited to not having to box him out because we were the worst defensive rebounding team in the league and I'm happy we won't be this year.
So what is success for a rebuilding Wizards team in Kuzma's eyes?
"Success this year is, individually, I wanna average more assists," he said. "I think I built up, especially the back-half of the year, my playmaking chops and I think that's just the next evolution for me as a player. I can score, I can see the floor, I'm tall, I can get people involved, but I wanna do it at a consistent high level. Cause that's gonna make me individually look better as a player.
"And as a team, to develop every single night being out there as a group from Game 1 to Game 82, are we a better looking team? Are we a more cohesive looking team? I think that's the most important thing as we go through this rebuilding period of the Washington Wizards."