So of course he's good. Second-best three-point shooting rookie this season behind Tatum-- and honestly wouldn't surprise me if he ends up the best three-point shooter in the class overall longterm.

But draft revisionists are gonna do what they do: ignore what happened in college entirely, ignore why Kennard wasn't a bad pick at all, and ignore how well the lesser player is doing because the player drafted below happens to be doing much better. It's like saying "why did the Nets take Jarrett Allen over Kyle Kuzma????" Just because Kuzma had a really great rookie year doesn't mean that Allen didn't have a good one himself-- and doesn't mean that Allen wasn't the right pick there.

If you look back at rookie seasons for players picked 12th overall over the last, say, twenty years, I'd be really surprised if Kennard didn't have a Top 5 season of that group. Might even be Top 3-- only Saric and Thaddeus Young strike me as obvious choices to be above him. This rookie class just had an exceptionally deep group of terrific rookie seasons because of some very surprising first-year results from guys like Mitchell, Kuzma, Bogdanovic, and Dillon Brooks.