The Denver Nuggets are expected to keep shopping the bargain aisle this offseason, and Luke Kennard has surfaced as a possible answer. The Los Angeles Lakers free agent guard is being discussed as a fit on a minimum contract, a low-cost move that would add one of the league’s best shooters to a team built around Nikola Jokic’s passing.
That is why Kennard keeps coming up now. Denver led the league in three-point shooting percentage because Jokic keeps finding open players beyond the arc, and the Nuggets are again looking for value rather than a splashy swing. Kennard has led the league in three-point shooting percentage multiple times, including 2025-26 when he hit 47.8%, which is the kind of number that makes a minimum deal easy to justify on paper.
He would not be a perfect clone of the options Denver could chase instead. Keon Ellis or Bruce Brown would offer more defense, and Kennard would be a small step down on that end. But the shooting gap is large. Kennard is a selective three-point shooter who thrives on open looks, and that matters in a system where the ball keeps arriving in the right place at the right time.
The fit is also easier to see when the current numbers are laid side by side. Jamal Murray led the Nuggets at 43.5% from three-point range, and Cameron Johnson was next at 43.0%, so even a guard who specializes in efficiency rather than volume can slide into a productive role. Kennard’s career line backs that up, too: he has averaged 9.6 points largely off the bench and finished fifth in Sixth Man of the Year Award voting in 2021-22 with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The real question is not whether Kennard can help the Nuggets. It is whether they decide his shooting is worth one of those one-year minimum deals when they could keep looking at other bargain free agents. If Denver wants the cleanest path to more spacing around Jokic, Kennard is already in the frame.
