Luke Kennard received a DNP-CD – zero minutes while healthy – for the first time this season in Friday night’s loss to the Miami Heat. To make matters worse, Quin Snyder’s decision to bench the Hawks’ new sharpshooter comes in spite of injury troubles that have plagued Atlanta’s perimeter rotation.
Kennard is one of the best shooters in the NBA, but he has a head-scratching tendency of not shooting the ball enough. Through 28 games in a Hawks uniform, Kennard is shooting the 10th most threes per 100 possessions. If Kennard isn’t making a significant impact as a shooter, what is the point of playing him?
Kennard has notoriously been a porous defender throughout his career, and this season has been no different. Teams are shooting 8.1% better on field goal attempts when guarded by Kennard – a truly embarrassing figure. Despite nine years of NBA experience, the sharpshooter still has not learned how to be a passable defender.
If Kennard isn’t shooting, he has no place on this team
Snyder is clearly disappointed in Kennard’s performance this year. The Duke product started the season with 25.3 minutes a night in the first seven games of the season, before he was demoted to just 18 over the following seven-game stretch. Snyder’s magic number with Kennard was 18, as that has been his average since first being moved down.
Against the Heat, however, Kennard received a DNP-CD, despite a poor 25% shooting performance from the non-Trae Young players.
Snyder has made it clear to his fellow Blue Devil. If he is not going to change the game on offense, he has no place on this Hawks team.
Kristaps Porzingis has missed 11 of the last 12 games and N’Faly Dante tore his ACL. This leaves the Hawks’ center rotation as: Onyeka Okongwu (6’8), Mouhamed Gueye (6’11, 30 pounds lighter than Okongwu), and Asa Newell (6’10, 20 lbs lighter than Okongwu). This is a lineup with one competent center and two tall power forwards masquerading as centers in an injury crisis. While Kennard is not a center, his weak perimeter defense is a much more serious problem when he has no help at the rim.
If the Hawks don’t have consistent center play, Kennard is the player who makes sense to move on from. His one-year, $11 million contract is very tradeable, and he makes much more sense for a team with a surplus of defense like the Rockets or Thunder.