If Luke Kennard is planning on making a career out of step-in midrange jumpers, I’m here to tell him not do that. He can still shoot those shots sometimes, but he has to offset those “bad” shots with lots of three-point chucking. That’s what teams and coaches want these days. No one cares how aesthetic those midrange jimbos are (which is very aesthetic). Aesthetics don’t win basketball games except by coincidence (like in the case of one Dirk Nowitzki).
And that’s a good thing too, because Kennard’s hair aesthetics are in the negatives right now. He’s got the Cody Zeller thing going on where his huge forehead is adorned by a little wisp of hair that looks like it’s going to disappear into his scalp at any moment. What are you even supposed to do when your hair abandons you like that? Shaving it all off is such a drastic option, and I can see why he wouldn’t want to go there. I guess he needs to go talk to LeBron about the finest hair replacement technology has to offer.
Follicular catastrophes aside, Kennard finally had another good scoring game tonight. He had a monster (by his standards) 28-burger soon after coming back, but other than that, it’s been only scattered scores in the mid-teens. The Pistons really need some shooting, and he’s theoretically a provider of that skill, but it’s not translating into anything. Not points, not chemistry, not shoe deals.