Luke “The ‘Nard” Kennard is getting unshackled right as the Pistons are putting together a large winning streak. I don’t want to attribute the Pistons’ recent success entirely to The ‘Nard, since there’s a few other things currently going right for the Pistons that most certainly won’t going right for them earlier in the season:
-Reggie Jackson is playing well and isn’t injured
-Ish Smith isn’t injured (him playing well is a foregone conclusion at this point)
-Andre Drummond looks like All-Star Drummond and not All-Poop Drummond
-Stanley Johnson is no longer rubbing his bust sauce all over everyone (pause)
-Blake Griffin continues to play like a superstar or at least a wannabe superstar
-I assume that more fans are showing up to the Pizza Palace than were showing up before (remember, it’s like a mall in there with all the stuff you can do, so if it looks like all the seats are empty, they are, but they really aren’t)
But Kennard’s takeover as the primary sixth-man scorer (instead of, like, Galloway or some other scrubunit) has been a revelation for the team and they seem poised to take a low playoff seed. Right now, that might seem like a bad thing, because, as an organization, being a perpetual low playoff seed in a weak conference is the worst place to be. But future generations will look back at this iteration of the Pistons and say to themselves, “They were an okay team. They made the playoffs, after all.” And what more historical impact could you ever wish to have other than being regarded as an “okay team”?