{"id":134114,"date":"2025-04-14T06:14:48","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T10:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=134114"},"modified":"2025-04-14T06:14:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T10:14:48","slug":"yuku-kawamura-career-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/14\/yuku-kawamura-career-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Yuki Kawamura Wraps Up Season With a Career Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since the beginning of the 2024-25 NBA season, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kawamyu01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Yuki Kawamura<\/a> has had one of the most interesting stories to follow. Labeled as the shortest guy in the league, the Japanese player made a huge deal just by making an NBA roster. Now, he wrapped up his first NBA regular season with a career night.<\/p>\n<h2>Yuki Kawamura Wraps Up Season With a Career Night<\/h2>\n<p>With the Memphis Grizzlies certain to be in the play-in, the team decided to rest almost every key player for their final regular season game. As a result, players who had been stuck on the bench got plenty of minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Yuki Kawamura, for example, played 28 minutes and rewarded the team with a career-best night. He scored a career-high 12 points on 3-8 shooting from the floor. All of his made field goals came from behind the arc. He also went 3-3 from the free-throw line.<\/p>\n<p>It was only the second time on the season that Kawamura scored 10+ points. His previous career-high was 10 points, against the Oklahoma City Thunder in late December. During that game, he made 4-5 field goals, including 2-3 from three-point range.<\/p>\n<p>This time, in addition to his 12 points, Kawamura also dished five assists and grabbed five rebounds. He was +29 for the game, the second-highest plus-minus on the team.<\/p>\n<h3>Yuki\u2019s Dazzling Assists<\/h3>\n<p>In the last game of the regular season, Kawamura had a career night, but one play made the highlight reel. It was not even a field goal, it was an assist. In the second quarter, with almost four minutes left, Kawamura stole a ball and then delivered an over-the-head pass to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/baglema01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marvin Beagley III<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/moranja01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ja Morant<\/a>, his <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/17\/ja-morant-yuki-kawamura\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">mentor and teammate<\/a>, loved the play.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Yuki Kawamura INSANE over the head pass has Ja Morant loving it\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IPYYT7_7gQg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Kawamura has been showcasing his passing ability in the few moments he has received playing time entering Sunday. It was only fitting that his best highlight came via a pass in his career night.<\/p>\n<h3>Yuki Kawamura Season in a Nutshell<\/h3>\n<p>Kawamura played a total of 22 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/gamelog\/_\/id\/5159895\/yuki-kawamura\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">games<\/a>, scoring 36 points, dishing 19 assists, and grabbing 12 rebounds. Not something to rave about. But he spent most of the time in the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/25\/yuki-kawamura-g-league-game\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">G League<\/a>. That is where Kawamura was able to show off his skills.<\/p>\n<p>In 24 regular season games for the Memphis Hustle, Kawamura <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/gleague\/players\/k\/kawamyu01d.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">averaged<\/a> 12.4 points, 7.8 assists, 2.6 rebounds, and 1.3 steals. He shot 40% from the field, but 41% from behind the arc.<\/p>\n<p>Kawamura is only 23 years old. There is no denying that he has a future in the league. If nothing else, it is to bring more Japanese fans to the game. The shortest player in the league has a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/26\/yuki-kawamura-fans\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">huge fan following<\/a>, making him a marketable star.<\/p>\n<p>Just recently, <a href=\"https:\/\/arch-usa.com\/asics-quietly-re-enters-basketball-with-the-memphis-grizzlies-hustle-pg-yuki-kawamura\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASICS<\/a> released a video with Yuki. The shoe brand is nowhere to be found in the basketball world, but maybe Kawamura will be the guy to get them back there. ASICS is a true performance brand, and they might be re-entering the basketball world with the Japanese star.<\/p>\n<p>He signed a two-way contract with Memphis at the beginning of the season. It was a one-year deal, He will be a restricted free agent this summer.<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Petre Thomas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since the beginning of the 2024-25 NBA season, Yuki Kawamura has had one of the most interesting stories to follow. Labeled as the shortest guy in the league, the Japanese player made a huge deal just by making an NBA roster. Now, he wrapped up his first NBA regular season with a career night. Yuki [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5291,"featured_media":134128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,32,62],"tags":[1822,49401],"class_list":["post-134114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-grizzlies","category-nba","tag-ja-morant","tag-yuki-kawamura"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134114"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134129,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134114\/revisions\/134129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}