Killian Hayes of the Detroit Pistons has played 34 games in the NBA and some fans are ready to write him off as a bust.
Unfortunately, I have to see this rhetoric pretty much every day on social media, where fans live and die with every missed shot and try to outdo each other with the latest hot take.
Hayes is 20-years-old and currently averaging 6.3 points and 2.9 assists, hardly numbers to get excited about, though there have been some positive signs.
Hayes was taken 7th overall by the Detroit Pistons (and also wears the cursed #7), which does come with some expectations, though fans would be wise to note that all picks outside of the top two or three are pretty much a crapshoot.
All teams have draft misses in that range, so yes, it is possible that Killian Hayes will not be a great player and that the Pistons made an error by drafting him.
It’s also possible that expectations are completely unrealistic and history shows you can’t give up on 20-year-olds, especially at the point guard position.
Just ask former Pistons’ great Chauncey Billups.
Detroit Pistons: Chauncey Billups is just one reason not to give up on Killian Hayes
I would compare Chauncey Billups’ 20-year-old numbers to Hayes’ but I can’t because he wasn’t in the NBA when he was 20, he was still in college.
After having a pretty good rookie season at age 21 (a full year older than Killian is now), Billups bounced around the league, playing for four teams by the time he was 24-years-old.
At age 24 (four years older than Killian is now) Billups averaged 9.3 points, 3.4 assists and 2.1 rebounds per game for the Timberwolves.
Billups was the 3rd pick in his draft, so a lot of people were calling him a bust too. How did that turn out?
Billups wasn’t very good until he was 25-years-old and didn’t make his first All-Star team until he was 29, nearly a decade older than Killian Hayes.
I am not saying that Hayes is going to morph into prime Billups, but can we at least give him a half season in the NBA before we declare him a bust? Point guards take time to develop, as it is the hardest position in the league, and very few of them are any good when they are 20-years-old.
These unrealistic expectations and impatient hot takes are 100 percent the product of social media, where fans now talk about and react to every shot in real time. Everyone wants to look smart, to make bold declarations that won’t have to stand up to scrutiny or the test of time because they disappear into the ether as fast as they can be typed.
Patience and lukewarm takes like (point guards take time to develop, Killian Hayes will be fine) get buried under “OH. MY GOD KILLIAN HAYES IS THE WORST PLAYER EVER, TRADE HIM NOW!!!” because that is the nature of the social media beast, where instant gratification is the only kind that exists.
Those of us who have been watching the NBA for a long time know this is silly fodder for a non-stop news cycle and has little connection to the reality of developing a point guard.
Most NBA players are not in their final form until their mid-20’s and some much later than that, so while I know this isn’t the most exciting or extreme take, fans simply need to be patient with Killian Hayes.