Lloyd Pierce, the coach who always shoots straight even if his team doesn’t follow suit every night, did not begin this season with particularly high hopes for the Hawks “other” rookie, the one drafted 14 spots behind Trae Young.
“I think Kevin in a lot of ways is what your typical rookie is – he started very slowly,” Pierce recalled. “I thought coming out of preseason: Kevin is going to spend a little time in the G League, he’s just not ready yet.”
But Kevin, as in Kevin Huerter, one of real revelations of this Hawks season, defied demotion.