When the locker room opened to the media on Wednesday night, Los Angeles Lakers rookie forward Kyle Kuzma sat straight-faced in a chair in front of his locker.
Kuzma led the Lakers to a 122-112 victory in a 43-minute performance against the San Antonio Spurs, but he didn't look like a 22-year-old rookie soaking in his 30-point night.
Instead, Kuzma's tweaked right ankle was soaking in a tub of ice, after the former University of Utah Ute had played 36 minutes the night before on the same hurt ankle that has bothered him since he injured it against the Denver Nuggets on Mar. 19.
In fact, Wednesday night proved to be the sixth time in the past eight games that Kuzma had played 39 or more minutes.
"He plays to exhaustion and then, most times, plays through it," Lakers coach Luke Walton said about Kuzma following Wednesday's win. "They have the saying, 'Fatigue makes a coward of us all.' And that’s true, except for a few special players. And they know how to fight through that. I thought Kuz did that tonight."
The coach added, "There's been some nights when he'll tell me, like, 'I need a break. I just need one.' And I'll get him out, but tonight I could tell, he wasn't going to ask to come out of that game. He was going to fight through it."
At one point late in the game, Kuzma fell down and stayed there. The television cameras caught his chest puffing up with every inhale and collapsing with every exhale. He just lay on the hardwood for a what seemed like an eternity until the cameras caught him mouthing the words, "I'm just trying to catch my breath."
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Playing through injury and playing through exhaustion are building the lore of the Flint, Michigan native, and both of those qualities were on display Wednesday night.
With his foot soaking in the yellow tub of frozen water, a voice said, "I couldn't tell if you were limping or strutting at the end of the game."
"Probably a bit of both," Kuzma offered one of his usual sharp responses.
After pushing the bucket of ice away, Kuzma sat with a serious look and waited while veteran Kentavious Caldwell-Pope finished up his postgame interview for the throng of reporters and cameras huddled inside the Lakers' locker room.
Then, rookie Josh Hart stepped up to take the spotlight as Kuzma listened intently and waited to interrupt with a needling comment. On this night, one play in particular stood out, of course: Hart missing the potential game winner at the end of regulation.
"That was kind of the second option if they denied Kuzma," Walton explained the play at the end of regulation. "We were going to Kuzma at the end of the game, but the shot Josh ended up getting was as good of a shot as you could possibly ask for."
Hart missed a lay-up, a "gimme" that would drop 99 out of 100 times.
"He closed his eyes and got scared," Kuzma interrupted Hart's press conference to explain how Hart missed the chance.
Hart returned serve, "If I would've tried to dunk it and missed it, I would've been you."
Hart won this round of postgame jabs, as both Lonzo Ball and Kuzma have been known to miss dunks to provide locker room comedy material. Once Hart finished answering questions, Kuzma stood up and faced the bright lights on his night.
"Just kill," Kuzma responded, when asked about his mentality at the start of overtime. "Just to try to win. I didn't want to lose that game. We have been losing the past couple of games, so I just tried to kill."
In the overtime period, Kuzma scored the first five points. He finished with six points over the added five minutes, while the entire Spurs' team scored four points.
Kuzma killed the Spurs. Then, he limped to the showers on a beat up ankle with only four games remaining in the Lakers' 2017-18 season.
