Areport from the European basketball news site EuroHoops this week stated that Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was spotted at the Turkish League Finals. And supposedly, he had one player in particular in his sights.
The player Mazzulla was purportedly there to watch was Nigel Hayes-Davis of Fenerbahce, whose accolades over the past couple of seasons have put him back on the NBA radar. Having briefly dipped his toe in NBA waters a few years ago, Hayes-Davis has been building a quality career over in Europe, and with the EuroLeague-to-NBA pipeline being a two-way street – as evidenced by the recent reports that the Memphis Grizzlies will sign All-EuroLeague First Team member T.J. Shorts this summer – anyone in the top tier of it is always going to be on the NBA’s radar.
Fenerbahce general manager Derya Yannier recently spoke of “serious interest” from the NBA in Hayes-Davis, and while Mazzulla puts a face to that, he and the Celtics are not the only team monitoring the player. Hayes-Davis is back on the NBA radar simply because he continues to get better, to the point that he is now one of the best basketball players not currently in the NBA.
Celtics Targeting Quality Frontcourt Scoring
The NBA does not always have the world’s 500 best basketball players.
To be sure, it does invariably have an almost-total monopoly over the top 250 or so. But the bottom half of the NBA is a churn, where opportunity, nationality, timing, cost, desire and choice of agency are among the many factors that all play a part in who gets the final few spots. And Hayes-Davis was once in that cycle.
Back in the 2017-18, in his first professional season after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Hayes-Davis (then known only as Nigel Hayes, before a 2021 decision to amend his surname to honor his stepfather) became the first Nigel in NBA history when he spent time with three different teams. He appeared in nine games split between the Los Angeles Lakers, Toronto Raptors and Sacramento Kings, all coming after a summer league/training camp adventure with the New York Knicks, before crossing the Atlantic to commence a European career that so far has taken him to Turkey, Spain and Lithuania.
Hayes-Davis is a better player than he was then, and a much better player than the one seen in his time in college. The Nigel Hayes of 2017-18 was on the cusp of the NBA – the Nigel Hayes-Davis of 2024-25, the one that the Boston Celtics are actively scouting, is even better than that.
Hayes-Davis finished this season seventh in the EuroLeague in scoring at 16.7 points per game, and those ahead of him all have NBA pedigree (Theo Maledon, Nikola Mirotic, the aforementioned T.J. Shorts, Sasha Vezenkov, Kendrick Nunn and former Celtics guard Carsen Edwards). That scoring total comes on an array of shots, and with incredibly efficient shooting from key areas, including 41.0% from three-point range and 90.8% from the free throw line.
An NBA-Calibre Player
Standing 6’8, Hayes-Davis is a versatile and aggressive scorer who can hit from long range, mid-range and the post, with the handle to drive between them all. A 6’8 playmaker, Hayes-Davis can score from anywhere, with footwork, fakes, IQ and shrewd passing vision, while also having the range on the jump shot required of the modern forward.
Defensively, Hayes-Davis’s lack of top-tier lateral speed is his biggest NBA question mark, and he is not a possession-winner. Nevertheless, the intelligence comes into play once again, and Hayes-Davis’s good effort level on that end makes him a solid contributor within strong team defences like Fenerbahce’s.
Other players with NBA credentials on the Fenerbahce roster include Wade Baldwin IV, Devon Hall, Marko Guduric, Khem Birch, Dyshawn Pierre, Nicolo Melli, Bonzie Colson, Scottie Wilbekin, Arturs Zagars, Tarik Biberovic and C.J. McCollum’s brother, Errick McCollum. On the opposing team, Bahcesehir, NBA-adjacent names include Tyler Cavanaugh, Furkan Korkmaz, Jaleen Smith, Marko Simonovic and CJ Massinburg. It was a game with plenty of talent in it.
Most of those players, however, are on the downslope of their career, and the others did not quite make the grade, despite express NBA interest in the past. Hayes-Davis was the one to watch, the one being watched. There are a couple of hundred players – at least – currently in the NBA who are not as good of basketball players today as Nigel Hayes-Davis, and while in many cases their youth will keep them ahead of him in the hierarchy, the Celtics are in a slightly different position.
Celtics Retooling, Not Rebuilding
Despite turning 31 in December, Hayes-Davis is defying his age and continuing to improve. While it would be an obstacle to many NBA teams, that age would put Hayes-Davis on the same timeline as the Celtics, a veteran team looking to win now.
Multiple reports indicate that the Celtics are looking to rework their roster this summer. Indeed, the need for change is considered so urgent that one report states that everyone except Jayson Tatum could in theory be dealt.
This was rumored to be the case even before the Achilles injury suffered by Tatum in the Celtics’ Conference Semi-Finals defeat to the Knicks, and has only become truer since. And while the most likely candidate for trade is said to be starting point guard Jrue Holiday – who is on the downslope of his career, and who has not many years left – it need not stop there.
Built to win now, the Celtics do not and need not aspire to bring about a youth movement. They will still be looking to win “now”, or as soon as Tatum’s injury allows them to. Hayes-Davis’s relatively advanced age, therefore, is not an obstacle to them – indeed, given the plethora of top-level experience that he has in the world’s second-best league (a two-time member of the All-EuroLeague First Team), they would greatly appreciate having a player who is ready to go from the moment the plane lands.
To be sure, Tatum’s injury puts that competitiveness timeline on pause indefinitely. Nevertheless, the retooling of a roster does not just have to mean targeting young players and dealing Holiday. Teams do not have to go younger to get better, and Nigel Hayes-Davis makes every team in the world better.
