Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 159: About Killian Hayes...

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

In light of the recent trade rumors, this episode goes in-depth on Killian's past, present, and (possible) future with the Pistons. 

Welcome back, everybody. I'm Mike and you're listening to another episode of Drive into the Baskets. Hope you folks are all doing well today. We are truly in the dog days of the off season. This is about as quiet as it gets. We're in that roughly three months span between the end of summer league and the beginning of preseason, which I believe is the 6th or the 7th of October in the upcoming season. So as always, I'm going to do my best to continue releasing weekly content for you folks.

and I just want to say I really appreciate it. Just want to give a shout out to those of you who have contacted me with feedback in the past. Feedback is the way I can tailor this content to be the most entertaining to you. And that's what I aim to do. So as the title suggests, this episode is going to be all about Killian. Now, I mentioned in the last episode that I may or may not do season review episodes about players who could be possibly not on the team next season. and Killian is entirely a wild card in that respect. If I had to give an answer, I would say that I suspect he'll be on a team to start the season,

but I'm not in business really giving strong predictions on questions in which I have absolutely nothing to base them upon, which is the case right now. Now, we did hear recently by way of Mark Stein, who's a generally reliable source, that the Pistons and the Mavericks engaged in some trade talks. Now it's that included Killian, also included Boyan, Bogdanovich, it's worth mentioning that the vast majority of trade talks go nowhere. I mean, we might hear about trade talks, and they may not have been really serious.

There may not have really been much serious consideration to actually making the trade. You know, we just don't know how far it got. But he did mention something about Killian, which is that the trade talks, in his words, were sparked by the person's determination to ease a backcourt logjam by trading Killian Hayes, also that they gained little traction. So there's that for that trade.

Now, when it comes to Killian, he's on the final season of his rookie contract. He's extension eligible this offseason. Obviously, that's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. But he's under contract for a little less, I believe, than $8 million. And just want to remind those of you, because I've seen questions about this. If the Pistons were to straight ahead and wave Killian, which I think is incredibly unlikely that they would do maybe toward the end of the season, it'd be still horrible. Or don't I say it's still horrible. if he struggles as much as he has to this point and does not show a lot of substantive progress.

Maybe you see him waived in that situation. More than likely, just traded to another team for another kind of disappointing prospect in the mold of, you know, the thonmaker Stanley Johnson trade back in 2019. But, you know, I'm getting way ahead of myself here. So to finish what I said, just to answer some questions I've seen, in the NBA, if you owe a player a dollar, and guaranteed, we'll put it this way. If you pay a player a dollar, then you always always. that dollar against the cap. And the vast, vast majority of NBA players' salaries are fully guaranteed.

That includes Killiam, the Pistons owe him the money, regardless, therefore it counts against the cap. So short of trading him, that salary is not going away. Now, what I consider realities about Killian's situation. Number one, if they want to trade him, well, this isn't a reality, this one, excuse me, once I get, I'll get to the realities in the moments. This one is just speculation on my part. My guess is that if they are trying to trade him, it is for his, you know, for him largely. The guy is very little trade value, that they're just trying to do right by Killian, who at this point, behind Monta Morris is a third-string point guard unequivocally. Obviously, they'd like to get something back for him, but that's very unlikely.

Right now, as I will explain, Killian has very, very little trade value. So some reality is a situation. The Pistons are not in a hurry to move Killian. I feel very, okay, I shouldn't use the word reality. These are things I feel very strongly are true, that the pistons are not in a hurry to move Killian. Again, they are not going to gain anything just by losing him. I don't know, who knows, maybe they would just be able to dump his salary, but probably not even then.

I mean, cap space is cap space. I haven't even looked, but I think, I don't know if there are any teams that are still below the cap at this point. It's actually pretty unusual for any teams to enter the season with cap space. It's just the realities of a soft salary cap. So in any case, the Pissons are in no hurry to move him. They lose nothing by keeping him on the roster. They may potentially gain in the events that he comes back and is a substantially improved player. and then you just take it from there. They have nothing to lose by keeping him on the roster. They have nothing to gain by paying to dump him. That's the second point.

They are not going to pay to move Killian. There's just absolutely no reason for them to do that. Number three, as I said, has hardly any trade value. So that kind of puts a damper on any sort of trade talks that solely include Killian. So they're trying to move in my doubt they're finding much interest. And that's about it. My fourth point was going to be that they've got nothing to lose. by keeping around to give him a last chance.

And it's probable just speaking in terms of just basic probabilities that there will be some injuries this season, we hope not. But some guys will miss time due to injuries and Killiam will end up possibly getting his final shot. Or who knows, maybe he comes into training camp and he just looks awesome and then they have to make a decision. You know, Montemortes is there. Pistons still could always trade him.

But that's a tremendous hypothetical. And I doubt that they would probably wouldn't be likely to do that. I don't even know why I got none of that. Killian, as I will explain in his current form is not really a lead handler. In any case, there's, you know, multiple things. He needs to make a lot of progress on Montemores. I don't know why even mentioned trade. Montemort is almost certainly staying on this team because he has a very, very solid backup point guard. And that's what the Pistons want right now for obvious reasons. Simply a very, very good training camp in preseason performance is not going to bump Killian above him. So I don't know why I said that.

Let's talk about Killian and we'll go into his season as well as 2022, 2020, 2023 season. So what is Killian? Now, I'll say it again. I think Killian is a solid three-point shot away, high percentage three-point shots. We'll call it a high-thirties, kind of a consistent basis on volume, away from being, you know, arguably a decent bench guy for a contender. He is a high IQ player, like a very high IQ player, a truly gifted passer. And he plays solid defense. It's solid, but I think that his defensive reputation has become a little bit inflated. I'm not sure why. The guy is definitely not an elite defender. I mean, I can say that with a very, very, very strong degree of conviction. He's solid, maybe a little bit above average. Has some warts in his defensive game, notably in defending against explosive guards, particularly around the pick and roll. But on the whole, solid defender works hard and a bulldog mentality, reliable.

I mean, he's got some mid-range upside. We've seen a bit. Again, that's just more of a tool in the toolbox, rather than a means to an end. And, you know, he's a hard worker for the most part, and definitely a team first guy. What else is he right now? Well, I'll tell you the one thing that actually genuinely pisses me off about Killing. And typically players who are just bad but play the right way don't actually bother me.

What bothers me about Killion is that the guy is absolutely avoidant of contact on offense to like a completely infuriating degree. Well, literally at times sometimes run away from contact. Like we'll be going full tilt and transition and there'll be a guy in front of him. and he'll turn and run away and pass the ball. And he was to say in the half court, he's absolutely unwilling to drive into contact. So that's just the one thing that genuinely pisses me off about him as a player.

It's not that he's a horrible shooter or an awful score or all of his struggles. This is just one thing that it's like, dude, at least give it a shot. Don't run away from contact. You know, it just at least be willing to drive into it so that you're not incredibly, incredibly predictable to the opponent. But, you know, I'll get into that. I'll get to that later. So just taking into accounts the passing and the offensive IQ and the solid defense,

if you just add a genuinely good three-point shot to that, then you've got a solid rotation player for, I would say, the vast majority of teams. You know, again, you take the passing, the IQ, the decision-making, the defense, and just basically he's a 3-n-D guard. And, you know, maybe kind of, I guess you could say Lonzo Ball Light, because I don't think Killian is going to be the defender and poor Lange. I just want to say, and I don't remember if I said this in a previous episode, and I've also got to stop saying that. I'm just conscious of repeating myself that, yeah, you can look at Bonzo and say, man, the guy made bank off of playing basketball.

That Lonzo, who is going to miss all of next season after missing what I believe was all of last season. Yeah, he's made bank at things have gone well. However, these professional basketball players are guys who have worked their basically entire lives to establish themselves at the highest level in the game they love. they want to play, they want to compete. Wanz him. Also, this is relevant, cannot run right now. He's in bad shape physically. So poor guy, I wish him well. It's a tough injury he's dealing with.

In any case, so killing him would be, in that situation, sort of Wanzo light. Lanzo is just a guy who does some perimeter passing is similarly unwilling to drive into contact. This does some perimeter passing, passing in transition, and shoots threes. He can shoot threes at a high percentage when left open, and he shoots them on high volume. So that would be the sort of player archetype. I think Killiam would need to be. Just shoot those threes at a high percentage.

Do that playmaking in transition. Do that playmaking kind of on a secondary basis when you're on the floor on the half court. And just shoot those threes. Now this is a little bit of sort of incomplete player type because really, at least you look at a bonzo, you have to be on the floor with guys who can, like multiple guys who can create offense and therefore free him from any onus whatsoever to do that himself. get him a bunch of open threes. So it's a bit of a fit dependent player still. You know, a guy who's pretty much exclusively going to be operating on the perimeter aside from some short drives and

passes. But you know what? You can make it work. And again, it's a potentially valuable player. I'll be a one who cannot step in to be the primary handler because he can't break down defenses. And who's going to attempt the vast majority of his offense just from the three point line. He also can't get to the free throw line, gets to the rim, et cetera. So nonetheless, Killian is just that shot away. Of course, we've said that about a lot of players. If an ex-player could just develop a high percentage three-point shot in some cases for some players like Hamidu Diallo, you know, if you can just be a weak average three-point shooter, the guy could be a strong score, Killian. If it could be a strong three-point shooter, then he can be a good player.

There are a lot of players, though, for whom that has been the death now for their career, you know, the if he can become a shooter, because if he can't become a shooter, as a perimeter player in today's NBA, I mean, the NBA has its needs and it is completely unforgiving. So that's the big if there. Killian does have some positive indicators, like the free throw percentage, for example, which is often a pretty good one, but in his case hasn't really matched. There's been no correlation thus far, needless to say. When he was entering the league, I mean, there were some questions about his three-point shooting there, but he was judged to have, you know, solid shot mechanics, high, you know, high free throw percentage, and he was

drafted on the basis of shooting upside, which obviously hasn't manifested itself yet. He did, he has worked on his shot a couple of times, has made substantial changes a couple of times, of course, you know, somebody can make the argument. I only just needs more time to work on a shot, but some guys just never get it together, unfortunately. Hopefully that's not Killian, and hopefully he gets his chance next season, and he can make the most of it. So let's go into Killian's 2022-2020 season. So by way of season-wide stats, 76 games played, started most of the season thanks to the injury

decayed, 10 points, three rebounds, six assists against about 2.3 turnovers, and he shot 38% from field, 28% from 3 and 82% from the free throw line, though from the free throw line for Killian is kind of irrelevant because he horribly ever gets there. So as far as a sis go, if we're going by assists per 100 processions, he was 17th in the league. As far as his scoring, he had the worst true shooting percentage of any common rotation player for defining that as more than 40 games played and more than 20 minutes per game. There were only three other guys under 50%. Killian was the worst by a couple percent at 45.5. Now, his efficiency was skewed downward by a horrendous start to the season, which he shot 20 percent from the field and 17 percent from three in his first 11 games,

but even take that out, and he was still the worst in the league, just by a shade under Dennis Smith Jr. at around 47 percent. So he did have a good portion of the season, of course, from near the end of November, or let's say just a much, much improved segment of the season, from late November to mid-January, in which that was 22 games, he played about 30 minutes per game, 45, 36 splits, average 13 points, 7 assists, three rebounds. Still only about 52% true shooting, thanks to what remained a bad shot diet. Like his kind of short mid-range jumper was really his go-to weapon, mid-range pull-ups in general.

I still wasn't getting in the rim, needless to say, he shot considerably better from three, but his volume wasn't very high. it was an improvement, but still not great. And he was inconsistent even then from game to game. Generally, he'd have a big game. You know, for every big game, he'd have a decent game and then, you know, one or two bad games. In any case, solid under the short jumpers around 49.5%. But that and longer mid-range jumpers, which is shot about 42%, whereas go-to, the majority of a shot. And though 49.5% in a short mid-range jumper is good, it's not sufficiently efficient. I mean, it's a tool rather than a means to an end. You know, you want to have to,

have other more efficient means of generating offense at the rim, the three-point line, at the free throw line. And for him, he really used it as a means to an end. Hence, why, even though he was much, much improved in terms of his efficiency, he still was not efficient. So progress, and you could see what a decent backup point curve would look like there. He had a couple of really big games against the Mavericks against Charlotte. Of course, this is the NBA. These are even the worst player in the NBA is a great, great basketball player. And, you know, not-so-good players are going to have big games. So not to say, don't get excited about those.

Those were fun to watch. But my point is that a couple of big games doesn't necessarily make a player. Whatever, maybe that's an irrelevant point. So anyway, he got suspended near the end of the year for punching Mo Wagner, who was a weasel in the back of the head, and came back at a couple more good games and then was pretty terrible for the rest of the season.

I've seen it blamed on him pepping it a very, very bad showing on very much home court in France. Even if that is the case, I mean, you're in the NBA, you need to be mentally tougher than that. Whatever the case, the rest of the season, 35% from the field, 21% from 3, 11 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 43% true shooting, which is awful. And that drops to 40.6% if you leave out those two final games against Indiana and Chicago teams that just didn't care. So where did he progress this season? He had a good stretch.

You know, that stretch from late November until mid-January was the best stretch he's had in the NBA. And, you know, you finally saw him, you know, saw what it might look like if Killian were a solid rotation or a decent rotation player for the pistons. Still had his warts again in terms of attacking the basket efficiency, but he was much, much improved. He made progress as a playmaker. He was assisting teammates on higher volume, you know, so some progress there. And, you know, we saw him play with some confidence for an interval. and Killian has really struggled with confidence at the NBA level. Confidence isn't going to get you all the way there, of course,

but it is an absolutely necessary quantity at the NBA level. Some guys have little too much confidence and end up playing in a way that really doesn't be fit their team. But in any case, you just have to have it. You're playing at the highest level here. You cannot be playing scared. I've gotten, as I've mentioned, as I say, as I've mentioned, because I'm not bragging about this.

I got through the auspices of a family member to sit at a court side a couple of times, at Nuggets versus Pistons games out here at Denver. And Killing up close really, really does not look comfortable when he has the ball. He looks very tentative, almost scared. And I'm not saying that to rag on the guy, but it really matches what we see in his on-court play, which is that, you know, a lot of the time, a lot of the time when he has been on the corner of the NBA, he's been very tentative and does not play with confidence. And for that stretch of about seven weeks, he was playing as a confident player, which is good to see.

Didn't always make him a good player, but it made him an improved player without a doubt. where he struggled. As a score, pretty much everywhere, at attacking the rim and breaking down defenses, and he really just dragged down his team's offense. And generally, he was on the floor for most of the time. You know, he had, again, that good stretch where, in some cases, he elevated the offense. But in the season on a whole, was still a problem. So why he was still genuinely a bad player, and I don't like to explain this, but I feel obligated to.

Or we'll put it this way. I mean, I've said plenty of negative things about Killian in the past. and, you know, why he was still bad and why he's on the edge of the NBA, I put it this way. He can't shoot. Can't get by in the NBA as a perimeter player if he can't shoot, aside from very, very few exceptions, and Killian is not one of them. He can't really score. He's an incredibly inefficient score.

He can't penetrate and break down defenses, get to the rim, draw fouls, and generally he's just horribly inefficient. He's bad on offense, and he's bad for the offense. Passing isn't enough by any means. Again, being able to shoot as a perimeter player is, again, with the few exceptions of which he has not won, just a mandatory skill in the NBA. And the NBA is absolutely,

that today's NBA meta is absolutely brutally unforgiving and very, very harsh toward players who can't do it. Like, they're just not in the league. Killian is basically like a worse Alfred Payton at this stage, and Peyton is rightly out of the league and has been for some time. So I've seen it as to, you know, Killian is a gifted passer. What about, you know, if you're just surrounding him with shooters,

you know, a team that, you know, on a maybe on a postseason team that can compensate for his inability to shoot. The answer is much like I enumerated about Tomadur Diallo, what I believe was last week, is that contenders don't want incomplete players. They don't look at a player and say, oh, well, you know, let's pick up this player whose teammates will have to compensate for this big weakness on his part.

So it's not really that there's a team that can compensate for his weaknesses. I mean, they just don't want players like that. You know, you put out, you put a guy out there who, absolutely needs to be on the ball and is a non-spacing threat. And the non-spacing aspect of it gets punished. And basically, like, the offense has to play him on the ball all the time. And it's just a bad situation for an offense. It doesn't really work too well as a non-shooter.

And it's just, yeah, there is no situation in which you will put Killiam where it will be worthwhile just because he has shooters around him. Just his own inability is a scorer, not to mention his inability as a driver as well. is just too damaging to any given offense. And you also don't want to need to lock an offense into him always having to have the ball. So now his current skill set is not sufficient to keep him in the NBA. And that's why his trade value is very, very low and why he is on the fringes in the moment. So what he could be.

Again, he's still young, still got space to grow. And, yeah, obviously, is the Pistons, you don't want another way any of these situations where, you know, you've got a Spencer Dimwitty or Chris Middleton or whatever, and they go on to develop, you know, after they leave the Pistons. of course, Jim Whittie is never, was not really given a chance to develop. I mean, he had a chance to grab the backup point guard spot in 2015, 2016, and certainly made the least of it. But, I mean, the fact that he was just basically cut loose, said we don't really have any interest in developing you go someplace else, you know, and further your career there, you know, for a team that didn't

exactly have a lot of youth, good youth in the pipeline, and really needed to focus on developing young talent that was really inexcusably stupid decision by an incompetent general manager. Mr. Chris Middleton, I'd like it to be noted that I think there's this sort of myth that the Pistons just gave up on him. Now, Joe Dumas was trading for Brandon Jennings in the summer in which she was making a bunch of bad moves in the course of desperately trying to save his job. Trading away Ben Gordon with a first round pick to clear space was one of those using that space to sign Josh Smith was another and trading for Brandon Jennings, who I know is well regarded for that stretch. after Josh Smith was waived, but on the whole, aside from, you know, a stretch very early in his rookie season, until that point had been really a selfish, no defense chucker. So Brandon Knight was the

main piece from the Pistons. John Hammond, I believe was his name, was the GM of the Bucks back then, asked for Middleton, and Middleton was a throw-in in that trade. Wasn't that he was given up on, is that this was a desperate general manager who decided to include him in this trade because he wanted Brandon Jennings. So I digress. Basically, you know, for, every one guy like that who really gets it together after he switches teams, there are many, many, many more who do not. These guys who are on the fringes of the NBA and in danger of flunking out, many, many more of them just flunk out of the league. So, however, he is still young, and that gives him a better chance of getting things together than if he was, for example, like 27 or 28 years

old. Now, when he was originally drafted the team, this was the Pistons, almost certainly looking for their primary handler point guard of the future. You know, Killian back then I thought had the capacity to be like, you know, if everything came together in terms of his ability to attack the rim, his ability to shoot three, his ideally stepbacks, and him having that pull-up mid-range jumper that he actually was very good at, that this in-between game that he was very good at in his final season in France, then at that okay, well, as long as he can also get it together with his right hand, which he arguably still hasn't done at this stage, then he was a guy who's in front.

between game and smarts can compensate for his lack of explosiveness in getting him to the rim. And he can also shoot threes. And if he can shoot that step back so much the better, if everything comes together, then he could be in the lower end of the top ten as far as starting point guards go. And that would have been a great outcome, borderline All-Star. Now, obviously, he hasn't improved in any of those capacities. So, and also, I mean, heading into the 2021 draft of the Pistons got the first overall pick, I mean, there was, I doubt there was even the slightest bit of consideration for the Pistons of, oh, do we draft for fit with Killian Hayes? Do we go with, you know, for example, Jalen Green, because he's not so much of a primary handler. I would be shocked if that

were the case, even if Killian had a solid rookie season, you know, unless it was absolutely, you know, blow you away great, you know, it was going to be Cade. Even if it was blow you away great, I think it was going to be Cade. So Killian's tenure as the prospective point guard of the future really ended the moment that Cade was drafted. Now, the Pistons tried him with Cade the following season, I think just to see if they could make it work. I don't think that there was much, if I had to guess, again, complete speculation. I would guess that there was not much hope along those lines from the coaching staff in the front office simply because the two of them were just a bad fit, even looking beyond the fact that they would have been the least athletics starting

back court in the league, which does matter. Athleticism does matter. It's not going to get you all the way, but you don't want to be an athletically deficient team. Even leaving aside that detail, just too much of Killian's prospect of ceiling, prospect of upside. that prospective impact comes from on the ball, and Cade was always going to be a pretty heavily on ball player. You want a different sort of player next to him. I mean, if Killian had developed is like into this excellent shooter and in really good motion shooter, that's a different story maybe.

But I don't think there was much hope that that would happen. So they tried him out for about 40 games. It was, you know, killing was terrible. He made things a lot more difficult on Cade. They ended up kicking Killian to the bench, bringing Corey Joseph in the starting lineup, not because Corey was a particularly good player, just because he could actually handle the ball and spaced the floor. and having him in a starting lineup freed a rookie Cade from needing to handle the ball on every single possession, which was a factor.

I know there's a certain philosophy out there. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong. I just strongly disagree with it that you should just throw players into the fire, throw young players into the fire and let them grow. I mean, these are young players in an incredibly competitive league. And that's asking a lot of them, you know, of a rookie to just, okay, you've got to handle it on every possession. I think there would not have been an ideal situation for Cade, in addition to the fact that Corey Joseph was able to space the floor,

whereas opponents had absolutely no respect for Killing as a four spacer. So just looking back, I know that that was a decision for which, probably enough, Corey Joseph caught a lot of flack. Obviously, a decision by Dwayne Casey, which I think was the right one, whatever the case, that came about because Killing was not good at all playing alongside Kate. So what can be on the team now? So in order to be the backup point guard,

Killian not only would need to make progress as a shooter that just needs to happen regardless if he wants to stay in the NBA. He would also need to make significant progress as a driver. Right now, his drive game is non-existent. That's in part because he, as I mentioned, will not attack into contact, period. And not only does this obviously undercut him in the first place, you know, make it impossible for him to be adept at breaking down defenses and getting into the rim or even try to break down defenses and get to the rim.

it also makes them incredibly predictable for defenses. Basically with Killian, defenses know that he's not going to drive into the rim protector. They know that if he gets around a pick and he finds himself open, all they have to do is advance the rim protector, you know, past the top of the restricted area, and he's going to stop and take a mid-range jumper or a floater, you know, a few feet short of the rim protector

because he's just not going to drive into that contact. What this means is that he draws absolutely no help. And basically just his opponent will continue chasing him, you know, if he's gotten behind him on the pick, and he coming around the pick, rather, and then they just advance the rim protector, and they know what Killian's going to do. So none of the defenders, none of the other perimeter defenders are going to leave to help on him. They are just going to let him take what, for the most part, for him, is not an efficient jumper. So cannot break down defenses, and needless to say breaking down defenses is an absolutely vital characteristic in a primary handler.

it's important to get those defenses scrambling, not just in the name of getting that good kick out to an open shooter, but even just the act of breaking down defenses, excuse me, wrong footing a defense just by requiring either the rim protector or ideally another perimeter defender to come help. I mean, that just creates a disruption in the defense, after which you're looking for that extremely high percentage play of, you know, kick and swinging around the perimeter and drive and kick and drive. drive and kick until you get a really good opportunity. You know, the heat or the absolute experts of that. If you can't break down defenses, if you can't break down defenses, excuse me, stuttering a little bit. Somehow I left it until like midnights to record this episode today. Call it poor discipline and getting way too into a computer game.

Basically, if you can't break down defenses as a primary handle, you are dealing, it's just a massive, massive weakness. You know, you don't necessarily need to go in and hit that first pass, you know, to an open shooter. that just the act of breaking down a defense off the drive is just a necessary commodity for a primary handler. And a primary handler I'm talking about even, you know, at any point on the floor, it could be a backup point guard. This is just a necessary skill. And Killian is in like the zeroth percentile of it for point guards.

Needless to say, this also means he can't get high percentage offense if, excuse me, high percentage opportunities at the rim, he's not going to get to the free throw line, which is a very, very high efficiency scoring chance. and so Killian, in order to be more than this three-and-deep point guard have described is really going to need to improve a great deal off the drive. And, you know, for the record, you know, do I think that, you know, I've seen it suggest to put it this way. And, you know, no offense intended to other people who have made this argument that Killian was just told by the coaching staff, you know, because he was really, really bad at attacking the contact. They just decided not to have him try it. I think that's extremely unlikely.

The coaching staff would have been as aware as anybody. that it was very important to his game as a point card to do this, and it's not like they're going to draft the guy in, but really any player, and say, well, we really need you to do this, but we're giving up on you right away. You suck at this. Don't even bother trying.

I think that's incredibly unlikely. I think this is largely just something that falls on the Killian himself. And who knows, maybe he could become fearless, drive straight into contact and still be horrible at it, still be horrible at scoring at the rim. But even if he were bad at it, at least defenses would have to respect him. They would have to respect the notion.

he might actually attack the rim rather than just pulling up for, you know, what for him is largely an inefficient shot. But that, of course, on its own, wouldn't be enough. You know, he would actually have to become solid enough on the drive to become a threat there and to be able to break down those defenses. So at this point, as I mentioned, if he impurs as a shooter, he can be that 3-and-D guy, but you're always going to want to play him next to an honest-to-goodness point guard because, you know, very, very gifted passer though he is, can't break down defenses, can't be that primary handler. he has to at least be a threat to get to the rim. So if he does improve as a shooter and improve quite a bit,

again, I don't think it's going to be enough for Killian to just be kind of like a decent three-point shooter. I think if that's going to be his main contribution on offense as a score, he's got to be genuinely good at it. If he can do that, then I think he could have a long-term place on this team as a benchguard. Even then, you're going to want to have him on the floor with the primary hand or a guy who can break down defenses. But, you know, a dude with the assets I described earlier

as a genuine NBA rotation player. Certainly still not the point guard and the player. the pistons would have been hoping for when they drafted him, but either he's a rotation player off the bench for a good team, or you can trade him for something. So that, I believe, is the likeliest upside for Killian, you know, upside in terms of what his ceiling is. I hope I'm wrong. I hope he comes in next season and is a really good shooter and has also, you know, has just made a lot of progress in his drive game and his willingness to attack into contact. As things currently stand, I would say he's just about certainly, whatever, this is not

rocket science. This is not a particularly insightful claim that at this point, he's the third string point guard. Monti Morris is a genuinely pretty darn good backup point guard. I don't think it's necessarily entirely out of the question that he's extended before the season begins because, I mean, he's just a solid player, solid veteran, solid backup handler who can step into the starting lineup and fill in as the primary handler in case of an injury. You know, he's basically what the Pistons would want out of a backup point guard. And I think, you know, the second round pick that it cost to acquire him was very, very well spent. So assuming that Killian is not traded in the offseason, you know, it'll be on him to report to training camp a very, very improved player

on the offensive end, at least very, very, very improved as a shooter, and take full advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves. In that situation, you might still find himself moved to the trade deadline, but in that situation, the Pistons would be doing so for assets. in return, which would be a far better outcome, of course, than him simply flunking off the team. Now, assuming Killian sticks around if I had to give a prediction, you know, I'm still pretty hopeful for Killian. I guess this isn't much of a prediction, just a feeling. I think that he stands a decent shot at getting it together this year. But it is, needless to say, with the organization, his last, last chance year. You know, players just don't get an endless leash in the NBA,

no matter how young they are. If they're in the fourth year of their rookie contract, and they're still performing very, very poorly. For the most part, teams will move on unless they see the chance for very, very high upside there. For example, Kemba Walker was terrible in the first four years of his contract. He got an extension, and he picked it up. I don't remember if it was an extension or you just signed a contract in free agency, but he really picked it up after his rookie contract. He is the exception rather than the rule.

And, of course, you look at Kemba Walker versus Killian Hayes, and you see a lot more upside back then, I think, with Kemba than you see with Killian now. So, yep, he'd still be young at the end of his fourth year, but the NBA is an unforgiving place. You know, if you're not measuring up, it's likely your team's going to move on and give those minutes and give those minutes that roster spots and that salary cab space to a player who is judged more likely to contribute. But I'm hoping for the best. All right, folks, on that note, that'll be it for this one. As always, want to thank you all so much for listening. We'll catch you in next week's episode.