PHOENIX – Kevin Huerter is a throwback.
Not so much his game. The Bulls guard is all in on the NBA’s 2025 run-and-gun, shoot-from-three-and-ask-questions-later philosophy that his new team plays with. No, it’s more in his attitude.
If Huerter was cast in a 1980s teen movie, he’d definitely be the antagonist. If he had to choose a karate dojo, he would have been Cobra Kai.
So while it’s now fashionable for most players to say the right things about their former team when they are traded, Huerter leans more towards simply speaking his truth. Old school NBA.
He did just that when he was first traded from the Kings in early February, insisting “I didn’t really get much opportunity there the last couple months. The flow and the rhythm of the game, I think it was very choppy the past year-plus. The fact that we’re going to play up and down here (with the Bulls), the ball is going to move side to side, no one’s really going to dominate the ball and we’re not going to run the same action over and over again.”
A drop the mic moment? Not really because Huerter now gets to face his former Kings teammates on Thursday. Back to the scene of the crime in Sacramento and still speaking his truth.
“We’re competitors at the end of the day,” Huerter said Wednesday. “Any game we go into we’re trying to win. I know those guys over there really well. It probably is that any time you get moved on from a team, I think it’s natural that you want to kick their ass next time you play them, but there’s no ill-will, no hard feelings. Still pretty close with a lot of people there, so go try and compete.”
It’s not just Huerter’s return to “Sactown” that will headline the night, however.
Awaiting the Bulls is the player that Huerter, Tre Jones and Zach Collins were traded for in Zach LaVine. While LaVine won’t be as forward as Huerter in publicly speaking about administering a butt kicking against his former team, he undoubtedly wants to do just that.
Yes, Sacramento has a better record than the Bulls, but they find themselves in a very similar situation – sitting in a No. 9-10 play-in seed and needing every win to try and improve where they currently reside.
Huerter hopes he can derail that for one night.
While he’s scored in double-digits in nine of his last 10 games entering Wednesday’s Suns contest, he hasn’t exactly liked how he’s shot the ball from three in his first six games this month. Huerter is a career 37.4% three-point shooter, so 30.6% since a win in Orlando wasn’t sitting well.
That’s what he’s been trying to self-correct.
“Yeah, I’m able to feel it pretty quickly,” Huerter said about when his shot is off or on. “It’s something where I think I’m more on the side of an overthinker when it comes to my shot, where I’m always critiquing. I want it to feel perfect every time.
“For me it’s always feel. You can rep (repetition) some, but you can also rep bad shots. You can rep something the wrong way, so repetition is not always the answer. Film is a good way to fix things. I always go through a stretch where I shoot really well and then watch when I’m not shooting well, figuring out where does the shot look different, but for me the biggest thing is feel. I have to feel like everything is in a rhythm, everything is in a good sequence and then go out there and shoot confidently.”