Will Bynum has long considered himself a trainer. Even when he was a junior in high school, years before his NBA career took off.
The former Detroit Pistons guard attended Chicago Crane High School and was teammates with former Grizzlies guard Tony Allen. As the story goes, Bynum moved in with Allen while in high school to make sure the latter he went to class and stayed academically eligible to play.
During every stop in his career, Bynum said he’s tried to help and uplift those around him. So it’s logical that Bynum, who spent six seasons with the Pistons from 2008-14, has dedicated his post-NBA career to training.
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Last year, Bynum, 37, founded The Grind Family, a skills academy for high school, college and professional basketball players. He’s working with some prominent clients, including Miami Heat rookie guard Kendrick Nunn (Oakland), Clippers guard Patrick Beverly, Cavaliers forward Alfonzo McKinnie and former Kentucky standout Tyler Ulis.
He’s also working with an international player who the Pistons could be in position to draft this October. French point guard Killian Hayes, 19, widely projected to be a top-10 pick this fall, has been training with Bynum since last summer.
Bynum is high on Hayes’ potential. As someone who played extensively overseas and had an unorthodox path to the NBA, Bynum is uniquely qualified to help Hayes get to the next level.
“Some people, they take their careers and they choose to be selfish with the information that they receive along the process,” Bynum said. “For me, I totally refuse to be that person because that’s a person that I always wanted to be in my life that I never had. I had to make mistakes and learn from my mistakes and I kept continuing to grow. I would always get that information out to the next person because I wouldn’t want them to go through the same thing that I went through.”
‘A basketball kid’
Three years after Joe Dumars stepped down as the Pistons’ president of basketball operations in 2014, Independent Sports & Entertainment, a sports, media and entertainment management agency, hired him as president of its basketball division.
ISE offers various services, including pre-draft training. Dumars brought Bynum into the fold as a trainer, continuing a relationship that started nearly a decade prior. It was Dumars who gave Bynum his second, and longest-lasting, NBA stint.
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After going undrafted in 2005 following a standout senior season at Georgia Tech, Bynum played just 15 games with Golden State in 2006. His next shot at the NBA came in 2008, when the Pistons added him to their summer league squad after he spent two seasons playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv of Israel.
Dumars then signed Bynum to a multi-year deal. He spent six seasons in Detroit, carving out a niche as a spark plug backup point guard. Of his 360 NBA games played, 338 were played in a Pistons uniform.
Bynum’s relationship with Dumars has blossomed in the years since. Dumars’ son, former Michigan guard Jordan, is one of Bynum’s best friends.
“For Joe’s character to supersede what I thought of him as a player was everything to me,” Bynum said. “The little conversations, everything that he’s taught me along his whole journey are things that I take with me every single day. That’s what I was looking for when I was a kid without me even knowing, that’s what I was looking for, that’s what I needed, and that’s what I am now to these kids here.”
It was Dumars who introduced Bynum to Hayes. ISE hired Hayes’ agent, Yann Balikouzou, in July 2019 as their director of international operations. Hayes is now represented by ISE, and Bynum began training him last summer. Hayes continued to work out with Bynum until March, when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted their training schedule. Bynum is hopeful that they’ll find a way to get back on the court before the draft.
“It was during the pre-draft camp,” Bynum said of when they first met. “Jordan and Joe were telling me they had a kid from France who was young, 16 or 17, that was really, really good. I started to watch the film on him before he got to (Los Angeles), because we were working out in LA the last couple of years. I started watching the film on him, and I would get feedback on what I saw in the film. I saw a lot of good things.”
Hayes was born in Lakeland, Florida, but raised in Cholet, France, where his mother, Sandrine, is from. Hayes’ father, DeRon, is a former Penn State standout who began playing for LNB Pro A, a French professional basketball league, when Hayes was just 1 year old.
At 16, Killian made his professional debut with the Cholet Basket senior team in France. He remained there for two years before signing with Ratiopharm Ulm, a top basketball club in Germany, last August.
As a 6-foot-5, left-handed point guard, Hayes has emerged as one of the top prospects in this year’s draft class. He has an advanced offensive repertoire for his age, already possessing strong footwork, crafty ball-handling and playmaking upside as a teenager.
A popular comparison for Hayes is James Harden, a lefty guard who possesses similar size. Hayes’ background reminds Bynum of another all-time great — Kobe Bryant, who was also raised in Europe and born to a father who played professional basketball.
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“I love Killian,” Bynum said. “He’s a great kid, a basketball kid. He’s like, as far as a basketball kid, I would reference that to Kobe Bryant, who grew up in Italy and is a pure basketball kid because his dad was playing basketball at the highest level. So the way that he grew up to see it is a little bit different. So when I compare, mentally, the basketball side of growing up, that’s the foundation that he comes from, a similar foundation of where Kobe come from.
“His mindset is different because he wants to be the best at it, and this is the only thing he sees,” he continued. “Some kids, they have a little bit more that they see because of the environments that they grew up in. So it’s a different dynamic with those types of kids. With a kid like that, I can see the development and the process of getting better a little more easier because of his foundation.”
With a 6-foot-8 wingspan, Hayes he has above-average height and length to defend other point guards. While he isn’t considered a high-level athlete, he moves well and has the instincts to stay in front of opponents.
Bynum wants Hayes to get in touch with and learn from Beverly and Allen, two of them NBA’s best defensive guards in recent years.
“His lateral footwork is really, really good,” Bynum said. “His hands are quick. And he has the patience to defend really, really good rhythm players offensively.”
As a player who spent extended time playing in Israel, China and Turkey, Bynum has a good understanding of how the NBA differs from international play. Hayes has the ideal skillset to take advantage of the enhanced spacing and higher level of athleticism that comes with NBA play, he said.
The Pistons have the fifth-best odds in this year’s draft, which should put them in prime position to draft Hayes. Senior advisor Ed Stefanski has previously stated that the organization intends to take the best available player, regardless of position.
“His pick and roll reads are really really good already, so he’s going to get better at that once he’s on a wider, bigger court in America and in the NBA,” Bynum said. “And he’s going to be with more athletic players. That’s going to be really good for him, he’s going to get better. A lot of things that people don’t understand with the game and can’t see, I can see because I played overseas. I’ve been there. I can understand his mentality and what he’s doing because I’ve been there. That’s the beauty in doing what I’m doing.”
Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @omarisankofa. Read more on the Detroit Pistons and sign up for our Pistons newsletter.