Luke Kennard has quietly impressed since being drafted by the Detroit Pistons in 2017 and will be key to the team’s success during the 2019-20 season.
For a time, Luke Kennard stood as a symbol of everything wrong with the Detroit Pistons franchise.
It did not take long for fans to see that the prospect Detroit passed over with the 12th pick –Donovan Mitchell – was a budding star, and that Kennard was not.
Mitchell’s emergence during the 2017-18 season underscored a decade of Detroit incompetence. Watching the rookie Mitchell lead the Utah Jazz to the fifth seed in the Western Conference made Pistons fans painfully aware that another missed opportunity in the draft meant Detroit would continue its slow march on the treadmill of mediocrity.
In the background, however, the 21-year-old Kennard slowly worked his way into Detroit’s rotation and quietly flashed an elite shooting stroke and a high basketball IQ.
This is the 10th of Piston Powered’s preview series – Detroit Pistons 2019-20 preview – that looks at each player throughout the month of August
Since he was drafted in 2017, the former Duke Blue Devil has proved that the Pistons may not have struck out after all.
Over his first two seasons, Kennard has averaged 8.6 point, 2.6 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game on 44.1 percent shooting from the field and 40.3 percent from three in 21.3 minutes per game. He has become a key offensive contributor for Detroit, providing much-needed spacing and secondary ball handling for a team lacking both.
All signs point towards continued growth and improvement for Luke Kennard as his role expands, and he will undoubtedly remain one of the franchise’s building blocks heading into the future.