SAN FRANCISCO — Kentavious Caldwell-Pope used the phrase on Thursday. Markieff Morris had done it two days before.

In answering questions about teammate Kyle Kuzma, the Lakers reserves referred to his “natural position.” They were calling him a small forward, and they wouldn’t get much pushback from Kuzma, who certainly looked the part Thursday night in the Lakers’ 116-86 rout of the Warriors at Chase Center.

Kuzma ran some pick and roll. He isolated and went one-on-one. He scored 18 points in the absence of LeBron James, who missed the game with a sore groin, and when it was over and a reporter asked how much it mattered that he’d played more on the wing in James’ absence, Kuzma said “Probably a lot,” then repeated the phrase.

“It just allows me to playmake and facilitate and not be a spot-up four type of player,” Kuzma said.

If that actually is his natural position, you’d never know it by the way Kuz is used.

Perimeter positions are almost interchangeable in the NBA these days, and Vogel said this week he largely lumps players into three pools: point guards, centers and wings. Kuzma falls into the latter.

But while the position data at Basketball-Reference.com is an inexact science, it estimates Kuzma has played 91 percent of his minutes this season at power forward, up from 83 percent last season and 79 percent as a rookie.

Though he’s preached since preseason his preference for having the ball in his hands, to create shots for himself and others, he’s shown it in short supply. He’s spent most of his minutes playing power forward, primarily as a floor-spacing, catch-and-shoot specialist.

That’s where Kuzma fits best when he shares the floor with James, and particularly when he’s on the court with James and Anthony Davis, in small-ball lineups where Davis plays center.

And though he hasn’t been a consistent 3-point shooter — his attempts per game (4.4) and percentage (31.6) are career lows — Kuzma has been effective in spot-up situations. According to Synergy Sports Tech, he’s scoring about 1.1 points per spot-up possession, which ranks in the 70th percentile in the NBA and grades out as “very good.”

So Kuzma has had limited opportunities to show the sort of improvements he hoped to make in his game this season.

Except when James misses a game.

James has sat for three of them this season — against Denver on Dec. 22, at Oklahoma City on Jan. 11 and against the Warriors on Thursday — and though that’s a minuscule sample, the difference in how the Lakers have deployed Kuzma in those games is striking.

In the 45 games he’s played with James, Kuzma has been a pick-and-roll ballhandler an average of 1.1 times per game, per Synergy. In the three games James has missed, Kuzma averages 6.3 such possessions.

When he and James both play, Kuzma gets 1.1 isolation possessions per game. That number jumps to 3.3 when James sits.

In James’ absence, Kuzma averages 23.3 points per game. In Kuzma’s other 45 games, he’s averaging 11.8 points. And that makes sense. James averages 25.5 points per game. When he sits, the Lakers have to find scoring somewhere, and Kuzma’s opportunities abound.

But the Lakers might be looking to replicate some of Kuzma’s non-LeBron numbers even in games James plays. The acquisition of forward Markieff Morris — signed this week after he agreed to a contract buyout with the Detroit Pistons — looks like evidence to that effect.

“We have a lot of guys, a lot of versatility,” Morris said earlier this week. “I can just be one of those guys that get used in the mix, playing four or five if we play smaller. Kuz can play his natural position at the three a little bit more, just giving us more lineups that we can use.”

After Thursday’s game, coach Frank Vogel said the Lakers have been “calling the same type of actions” for Kuzma lately, and that he got more minutes and more opportunity with James out. But he conceded pregame that one benefit of adding Morris is what it opens up for Kuzma.

Kuzma said after the game that freeing him up for more minutes on the wing was “kind of the plan bringing Markieff here.”

It’s a long shot that over the long haul of a stretch run Kuzma will replicate the success he’s had in three games without James. But the Lakers are desperate for scoring in the minutes James rests — they score 9.2 fewer points per 100 possessions when he’s not on the floor — and it’s worth exploring whether letting Kuzma work on the wing kickstarts something.

There’s no guarantee that it will. Kuzma got going in the second quarter on Thursday by driving the ball at overmatched defenders, but the Warriors have the league’s worst record and sixth-worst defense.

Even with Morris in the rotation, Kuzma might find himself back in his old role, in what might or might not be the unnatural position of spot-up-shooting power forward.

“I’ll still fall in line,” Kuzma said. “Doesn’t matter. Obviously LeBron not playing allows me to have the ball, pick and roll, but there’s certain times when LeBron’s not playing where I’m able to do that, when he’s not on the court. But when he’s on the court, you kind of just fall in line and let that kind of dictate.”

(Top photo of Kyle Kuzma: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)