Milwaukee Bucks Rumors: Could Luke Kennard be a trade deadline target?

As speculation ramps up ahead of the trade deadline, the Milwaukee Bucks have been suggested as a team that could be interested in trading for Luke Kennard.

The big day has arrived, and with just hours remaining until the trade deadline, there’s already evidence of the Milwaukee Bucks’ rivals in the East scrambling around in an attempt to close the gap.

It remains to be seen whether the Bucks make a move of their own to counteract any of those acquisitions, and to date there have certainly been some mixed messages about Milwaukee’s interest in making moves.

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General manager Jon Horst has made it clear that he’s very happy with where his team is at this point, and that he’s wary of disrupting team chemistry, and yet reports have persisted in suggesting the Bucks are in the market to be potential buyers on Thursday.

One of the latest pieces of speculation related to the Bucks emerged on Wednesday night, linking the Bucks to a young player that could bolster their guard depth, and offer an additional injection of shooting coming off the bench.

Speaking on the Fox Sports Detroit broadcast on Wednesday night, James Edwards III, the Detroit Pistons beat writer for The Athletic, suggested that he believes the Bucks could be a team to watch out for alongside the Suns and 76ers, if Kennard proves to be on the move ahead of the deadline.

"“You hear names like Phoenix, Philly, I think a team to look out for in all of this is Milwaukee. Obviously, they got a good taste of Kennard last year in the playoffs. Even though they swept the Pistons, Kennard played really well. They’re a team in the same division so they know him well, and they’re looking for kind of another creator to add to their team as they make a championship push. They got an extra first round pick from the Indiana Pacers, and someone like Sterling Brown, who’s an aggressive two-way guy that seems to fit the mold for perimeter players that Detroit’s looking for, maybe you could find something to work there.”"

Kennard has been heavily linked to the Phoenix Suns in recent days, but ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that a prospective deal hit the rocks on Wednesday night.

Kennard was having a fantastic season, shooting over 40 percent from three-point range, but has been sidelined since December 21 with tendinitis in both knees.

There would be major question marks over whether Kennard could get back to the level of health required for him to not just be useful, but to get fully up to speed with a new system in the months ahead.

If the Bucks were confident that could be a possibility, Kennard would certainly be an intriguing target, and one where the structure of a deal could be relatively simple, as Edwards laid out on Fox Sports Detroit.

Another possibility, given Milwaukee’s reported interest in Markieff Morris, would be a larger deal including Kennard. D.J. Wilson would seem a likely candidate to be included in a deal with that composition too.

My guess would be that the Bucks would undoubtedly make a dream trade partner for the Pistons in the hypothetical where they’d be prepared to bundle the Pacers’ first round pick with Sterling Brown. I’d be a lot more skeptical of whether that actually is the case from a Milwaukee perspective, though, particularly given Kennard’s current injury issues.