Detroit Pistons: 5 things you probably didn’t know about Killian Hayes

Here are five facts about Detroit Pistons top draft pick Killian Hayes that you may not know.

Like every NBA first round draft pick, Killian Hayes of the Detroit Pistons has a  player profile containing his personal bio, including height, weight, scoring averages, and shooting percentages.

Thanks to ESPN’s NBA draft night crew and other media outlets, we also know that his dad DeRon Hayes played collegiately at Penn State and later professionally in France.

But a deeper dig uncovered five interesting tidbits you might not know about the Pistons’ 2020 first round pick and presumed starting guard:

He’s already been crowned a league MVP

In 2017-18, as a member of Espoir Cholet, a junior league team in France, Hayes averaged 16.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 7.2 assists as a 16-year-old.

At the end of the regular season, Hayes was named MVP of the French LNB Espoirs League. In the postseason his team advanced to the finals, won the championship, and was awarded the Trophee du Futur (trophy of the future). Hayes was named MVP of the finals.

He played his first professional game at age 16

After attaining star status at the junior level, Hayes was added to the roster of the Cholet Basket senior (professional) basketball squad just three months after his 16th birthday. A reserve, he appeared in nine games, averaging about nine minutes per game playing against much older players.

He played for the same French club that produced Rudy Gobert

Gobert played for Cholet Basket from 2010-2013, prior to being drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the 2013 NBA Draft. On draft night he was traded to the Utah Jazz, and as a member of the Jazz he has been named NBA Defensive Player of the Year twice (2018 and 2019), and was an All-star for the first time in 2020.

He is an excellent free-throw shooter

In Hayes’ three seasons as a professional, his career free-throw percentage is an impressive .840, and has improved dramatically each year. In  2019-20 he played for ratiopharm Ulm in Germany’s Bundesliga, and shot .909 from the charity stripe for the season.

At seventh he is the highest drafted French player in NBA history

There have been 19 Frenchmen selected in the first round of the NBA draft. The list includes future All-Stars Tony Parker (28th), Rudy Gobert (27th), and Joakim Noah (9th). But none has ever been selected earlier in the draft than Hayes.

Of course, there are many things Pistons fans still don’t know about Killian Hayes and are anxious to discover: How good is he? Will he start right away? Can he play NBA defense?

It will be most interesting to see how quickly he adjusts, how high his star will rise, and how brightly it will shine.

The start of the 2020-21 NBA season is only a few weeks away. It’s time to find out.