Los Angeles (AFP)
Playmaker Killian Hayes, the great hope of French basketball who has played so far in Ulm in Germany, will appear in the next NBA draft, scheduled for June 25 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, he announced Friday at ESPN.
"I'm running for the NBA draft. I sent the papers to the League office and I'm thrilled," wrote Hayes in an email to American media, which puts him in 10th place in his screening for this annual scholarship for players from universities, high schools and foreign countries.
Aged 18, the player born in the United States in Lakeland (Florida) is the son of DeRon Hayes, who played in the French Championship in Cholet.
Killian (1.96m), trained in the same club, played his first two professional seasons there, before joining Ratiopharm Ulm last summer where he was shooting at 12.8 points, 6.2 assists, 1.5 interception in 27 minutes on average in Eurocoupe, before the coronavirus stops the season.
European champion under 16 in 2017 with the Blues (MVP of the competition), vice-world champion under 17 in 2018, Hayes however refused his selection to the Euro under 20 in the summer of 2019. He had been suspended six weeks by the disciplinary committee of the French Basketball Federation.
Hayes will be the third Frenchman drafted before his nineteen years, after Frank Ntilikina (8th in 2017 by New York) and Sekou Doumbouya (15th by Detroit in 2019), during the high mass whose place and date could change in because of the coronavirus pandemic.
But he will not be the only "Frenchie" since Théo Maledon, the leader of Asvel (also 18 years old) and the players of Gonzaga University, Joel Ayayi and Killian Tillie will also be there.
© 2020 AFP