It’s not much, but 12 points does tie a career high for Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, so here you go. 12 points, 4 threes, and the video cuts out right before you get to see Markelle Fultz hit him in the face with an elbow before the referees review the play for approximately 30 minutes.
Mykhailiuk has actually been getting minutes in Detroit, after not doing much at all with them during the end of last season (he had all of 2 buckets in the 3 games he appeared in out of 29). I thought that he would reprise his role of “Mr. Inactive”, but they’re giving him playing time to see if he can capitalize on the potential shown in those hype videos he had when he was 16 in the Ukraine.
I haven’t been watching the Pistons too much (just seeing Thon Maker on the bench gives me horrid flashbacks), but my diagnosis of the situation is this: Mykhailiuk needs to shoot more. A lot more. As it stands, he’s not doing much of anything besides sometimes scoring a little bit. But he’s shooting almost 50 percent from deep, which means that until that number dips down a bit, he should have free reign to chuck all the threes he wants. That’s his value as an NBA player, why would he lower his value by NOT chucking?