The problem with Jaxson Hayes and the case against drafting rim runners

Why rim runner is the least valuable center archetype and why Jaxson Hayes and Nic Claxton might be overrated on draft day

YOU’RE DRIVING TOWARD THE RIM FOR WHAT LOOKS LIKE AN UNCONTESTED LAYUP WHEN BAM! Out of nowhere a giant human leaps into the picture and swallows your shot hole, leaving you in his shadow. Before you can recover, you watch the shadowy figure lope down the court. Four steps to half court, four more to the rim, and there he catches an alley-oop over your poor, posterized teammate. You’re the latest victim of an NBA rim runner. Texas freshman phenom Jaxson Hayes has eaten you alive.

Jaxson Hayes stands almost 7-feet tall with a gigantic 7'3.5" wingspan and a ginormous 9'2.5" standing reach. He swatted 71 shots as a freshman this season and made 73% of his own shots, most of them lobs or dunks. Now Hayes enters the 2019 NBA draft as its newest sensation, a modern rim runner who blocks shots at one end and finishes them on the other.

There’s just one big problem — we might be vastly overrating rim runners.

In the modern NBA, centers can be divided into one of four buckets: offense-first, defense-first, rim runners, and balanced. Most centers fit naturally into one of these four buckets. Let’s study what players in each bucket look like and see why rim runner may be the NBA’s worst, not best, center archetype and why…