Detroit Pistons: Pros and cons of playing Killian Hayes this season

Detroit Pistons: Should Killian Hayes come back this season?

Pro: Obviously the biggest pro to Killian Hayes returning is that he will get some valuable reps and minutes in his rookie season.

No one wants to miss an entire season at any point of their career, but it is particularly painful to lose these minutes that could come with no pressure, as the Detroit Pistons don’t really care about winning at this point.

Hayes can come back in games that don’t matter, play as many or as few minutes as they deem appropriate and build some positive momentum heading into the offseason.

Hayes has reportedly been working hard to get back and hasn’t played much meaningful basketball because of COVID and his injury, so it would be nice to get him some reps, even if it is only for a few games.

Con: This is the type of injury that can be re-aggravated very easily. This is what happened to Isaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics, who had the same injury that Hayes has.

After suffering the injury early in the season, the Celtics elected to bring Thomas back too soon and he re-injured himself, essentially ending his season and lengthening the rehab.

This is the risk of choosing rehab over surgery, as surgery does more to fix the problem that caused the injury in the first place while rehab just gives the injury time to heal.

Hayes could return, hurt himself again and have to get the surgery anyway, or at the very least could require the entire offseason or more to rehab.

This seems like an awfully big risk just for some run in a handful of meaningless games.