The Atlanta Hawks came very close to a perfect offseason. Then they went and ruined it with a painfully bad free agent signing.
Luke Kennard has gone his entire career convincing teams that he is a positive NBA player. He consistently signs contracts above his actual value to a winning team, plays at a mediocre level, and then repeats it again the next summer. The rest of the league should know better, but to quote a common saying "it only takes one" to overpay a player.
To be fair, the Atlanta Hawks didn't give up the farm to sign Luke Kennard. They signed him to a one-year, $11 million contract on the first night of free agency. If things go poorly he will be an expiring contract they can look to move or he will simply come off the books entirely next summer.
Paying Kennard $11 million, even for one year, was an uncalled-for overpay. No one else, presumably, was going to offer him such a contract -- and if they did, they would have been wrong to do so. Kennard should have been hunting for contracts in the $5 million range, not nearly the full mid-level.
Luke Kennard has one exceptional NBA skill, and that is shooting the basketball. That skill is undeniably valuable in the modern NBA, and Kennard is better than almost anyone at it. He is a career 43.8 percent shooter from deep, the 3rd-best in NBA history.
Kennard, however, gives everything back on the other end of the court. He is one of the league's worst defenders and has been every single season of his career. He cannot handle the ball well enough to initiate offense, position-locking him at shooting guard. He also averages too many turnovers for his role, further pulling at his offensive value.
On defense, unlikely many players of his build, he doesn't do a good enough job generating steals or taking charges to balance his poor athleticism and terrible instincts. He is knocked around by stronger guards and wings and left in the dust by faster ones.
In fact, if you want a decent comparison for Kennard's defense, you might look to...Trae Young. The Hawks have paired two of the absolute worst backcourt defenders in the league together, and if they ever share the court together the results would be catastrophic.
The Hawks deviated from their plan
The Atlanta Hawks looked at their star player and asked "how can we build a team around Trae Young" -- and over the last calendar year have executed an excellent plan to do just that. They added long, skilled, plus defenders at every position. Dyson Daniels and Zaccherie Risacher on the wing, Kristaps Porzingis at center. Nickel Alexander-Walker, whom they also agreed to sign on Monday night, is the perfect 3-and-D guard to pair with Young -- what Dyson Daniels purports to be, minus the insane steal numbers. Even the misguided Terance Mann trade added such a player, even if he wasn't good enough to earn minutes and was overpaid on his contract.
In one fell swoop they blew that plan to pieces. Kennard has a 6'5" wingspan, identical to his height; the average NBA player has a wingspan four inches longer than their height. He is slow of foot, not tough, and not a plus athlete. His skill level essentially boils down to his shooting.
Kennard's shooting is strong enough that he deserves to be in the NBA. Perhaps on a minimum he was worth the risk for the Hawks. Spending $11 million on him was inexplicable. In a marketplace where Gary Trent Jr. got $7 million and Sam Merrill got $9 -- both movement shooters who can actually defend -- giving Kennard $11 million was a gross miscalculation.
The Hawks got high on their own supply, tried to "win" the offseason, and in the process cracked a flaw into their perfect couple of weeks. It may not doom them, but it certainly isn't going to help them as much as they hope. And unless something unespectedly changes, they will live to regret signing Luke Kennard to such a large contract.