Luke Kennard compares playing high school QB to current Lakers role
Lakers guard Luke Kennard was a great basketball player in high school, but he was also a standout on the gridiron.
Luke Kennard has made a nice living for himself in the NBA, and he's a major reason the Los Angeles Lakers took a 2-0 series lead over the Houston Rockets in the first round of the playoffs. He scored 50 points in the first two games combined, and he has done a fantastic job of picking up the offensive slack with Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves injured. But there was a time when Kennard was also a star on the gridiron.
While he was on the way to surpassing LeBron James to finish second in career scoring in Ohio high school history, he was also a standout quarterback at Franklin High School. In 2013, his junior year of high school, he threw for 2,331 yards and 26 touchdowns while adding four more touchdowns on the ground. With Doncic and Reaves out of action, Kennard has been asked to take on ball-handling and facilitating duties, a role that doesn't seem to be natural for him.
But he said that there are some similarities between that role and playing the quarterback position. “Obviously communication. The word organized just comes to mind.
Trying to get guys in the right spot and then just making reads out of certain situations. ... You can compare it a little bit.