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From a Pistons fan who has seen most of Hayes’ games over the last two years:

Hayes is weird because he’s simultaneously both better than his stats, but also much worse than his stats.

He’s better in that he’s a very solid defender and a good passer, and generally doesn’t LOOK like a weak link minute by minute. He doesn’t bleed points on defense, turn it over, make stupid decisions that grab your attention, etc. You can go a long time without noticing him for better or for worse.

But where he’s much worse than his stats is in everything he can’t do, and doesn’t even try to do.

He can’t drive to his right. At all. He literally cannot take two consecutive dribbles with his right hand on a drive - he always has to come back left. Any feint he makes to the right is only to set up his left. And forget about finishing with his right hand - I literally haven’t seen him do it in two years.

And this limits him tremendously. It basically takes away half of the court in any given play - he’s absolutely no threat to do anything going right.

And so he’s basically no threat to drive into traffic. He can’t finish in traffic in the half court - despite being big and fairly athletic. And so he can’t even initiate anything meaningful going to the basket - there’s no creative potential, no uncertainty in his intentions, when he does anything. The defense knows they just have to take away his very simple one option - a left hand layup - and there’s nothing else he can do. The only possible outcomes are a pull-up jumper or a pass.

So where he’s worse than his stats is in all that he can’t do. When he’s out there, you’re conceding that one of your guards has no ability to attack the basket or create for bigs in the half court.

So your offense suffers and everyone else has to do more, because he can’t do those basics. But you don’t notice it’s because of Hayes right away.