Gordon Hayward Will Be Vilified In Utah
Though he may have made the right choice, Jazz fans will feel the sting of the All-Star forward’s decision and wonder what could have been
Someone ought to let Derek Fisher know that he’s finally off the hook in Salt Lake City. Gordon Hayward will surely be more vilified, and booed more loudly inside Vivint Smart Home Area, than the player who once duped the Utah Jazz into letting him out of his contract in the name of his daughter’s health, only so he could then re-sign with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Fisher never ripped the hearts out of a fanbase twice in a single day, as Hayward did on Tuesday. Fans were pulled away from their July 4 backyard cookouts to the news that Hayward was leaving as a free agent to the Boston Celtics, only to have his agent refute the report in an effort to control the narrative and buy Hayward enough time to file his 2,099-word prose to The Players’ Tribune, explaining his reason for bolting.
It felt kind of like leaving in the middle of the night Bobby Petrino style — the only thing missing was a generic note at each locker. Maybe that’s because Hayward was already at his home in southern California, ahead of the inevitable backlash in Utah. It also felt a lot like when LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami in 2010, when the Cavaliers and their fans were left to pick up the pieces after one of their homegrown players left, following an announcement that felt somewhat cold and contrived.
In the end, Hayward was still on his way out, and when the Celtics visit the Jazz this season it will be one of the more anticipated games on the NBA schedule.
Maybe fans should have always known. It’s easy to see now, but it seems Hayward always wanted more. Nothing ever seemed to be quite good enough in Utah.
That became evident when the Jazz finished its best season since 2010, then seemingly made every concession to keep its All-Star forward, yet he still left to join the Celtics.
The Jazz traded for Ricky Rubio, reportedly to appease Hayward, who said he’d love to play with a pass-first point guard of Rubio’s kind. Utah re-signed journeyman Joe Ingles, Hayward’s closest friend on the team, for a hefty $52 million, and during last month’s amateur draft traded into the lottery to get another perimeter defender and shooter in Donovan Mitchell. Collectively, it wasn’t good enough.
Being one of the two best players in Utah, on one of the 10 best teams in the league, wasn’t enough for Hayward. The drive for more has been there for years.
Three years ago, that came in the form of a maximum salary from the Charlotte Hornets. The Jazz matched it and he returned to Utah with a smile, though often felt like a player frustrated by the organization’s five-year rebuild. He was never content with the status quo, not even with his game blossoming under coach Quin Snyder and with an emerging All-NBA big man in Rudy Gobert.
The pull of something bigger than the playoff bubble seemed to be on Hayward’s mind. Not content with his game, he spent a week working with Kobe Bryant last summer in Newport Beach, Calif. They surely talked about championships — Bryant has five — and legacies. Hayward told ESPN’s Zach Lowe that it was one of the “best weeks ever.” He spent the rest of the summer in Utah, training with Jazz assistant Johnnie Bryant, who helped him rebuild his workout regimen and get stronger, which transformed his game and turned him into an All-Star last season.
To be a superstar, though, at least in Utah, Hayward would need to compete for championships. Kevin Durant, already a former MVP, reached the next level on the NBA hierarchy by winning one last month, and seemingly every superstar player — from James Harden to LeBron James, from Steph Curry to Russell Westbrook and Paul George — will play for teams that will likely be in the hunt next season.
Would the Jazz ever be in the mix for a title? Perhaps. Utah had an 11–2 record during the regular season with its starting lineup healthy together. Again, though, that relatively small sample size just wasn’t enough to convince him to stay.
Instead, Hayward decided to join what Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey referred to as the “weapons race,” with many of the league’s best players joining forces in an attempt to win a championship together. Hayward evidently wanted in on that. Sold on the opportunity to play for his college coach, Brad Stevens, (who recruited him out of high school and initially convinced him he could once day be an NBA player) and with one of the top teams in a weakened Eastern Conference that appears to have an easier path to the Finals.
What’s interesting about Boston is that Celtics executive Danny Ainge was criticized heavily for passing on a trade that would have landed him All-Star forward Jimmy Butler last month. But not trading for Butler perhaps helped persuade Hayward to come aboard. It’s possible, with another scoring forward in the fold, Hayward would have not agreed to join the Celtics, and instead Ainge would be left with two ball-dominant players and an unlikely fit with Butler and point guard Isaiah Thomas.
Aside from his connection to Stevens, the winning culture among New England sports teams and the obvious prestige that comes with playing for the Celtics, Hayward may have also been sold on the chance to play for a team that won 53 regular season games a year ago, but has the assets to improve dramatically in the coming years. The Celtics have seven first round draft picks over the next three years — including Brooklyn’s unprotected pick in 2018, a pick that will either come from the Lakers, 76ers or Kings, and a top-8 protected pick from Memphis. They also have two players in Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum who were picked third overall in each of the last two drafts.
Boston can use those picks to either add to their absurd amount of growing young talent, or ship them away in future deals to either shed an unfavorable contract or package them together for another star. Don’t feel like paying Al Horford $59 million over the final two years of his deal, from 2018–20? The Celtics have the assets to package him with a draft pick that could free up space under the salary cap to make a run at another big-name free agent, like, say, Russell Westbrook or DeMarcus Cousins.
Though the Warriors have a roster that includes four All-Star caliber players and the Cavaliers and Rockets also each have arguably two of the top 20 players in the league, none of those three rosters are set beyond next season. There are rumblings Golden State owner Joe Lacob may be reluctant to pay deep into the luxury tax while servicing debt on a new arena, and the Warriors don’t have all of its stars locked in to long-term deals. Neither does Cleveland or Houston. Durant just re-signed with the Warriors on a deal that’ll last just two years. LeBron and CP can each be unrestricted free agents next summer.
Boston might be the team in the league best positioned to improve year-by-year. The current rotation features just one player (Horford, 30) who is beyond his twenties. To that point, just five teams in the league had a younger roster than the Celtics last season, according to RealGM, yet Boston still finished first in the Eastern Conference.
Hayward, 27, fits nicely with Boston’s core group of players. He’s entering his prime and still young enough to fit with a younger roster, yet seasoned enough to be a steady veteran presence with some playoff experience. His connection to Stevens may even elevate his game further. It’s a rare situation where a team acquires a star player who the team already knows will not have chemistry issues with its coach.
If Hayward becomes the lynchpin to a championship resurgence in Boston, he could emerge from Tuesday’s fiasco a hero in Boston. That’s surely what he’s banking on; winning in a big market for one of the NBA’s flagship franchises, which will provide him with the validation he likely never thought was a possibility in Utah.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that. If the Celtics win big in the coming years with Hayward, most outside of the Jazz fanbase will either forget or forgive the egregiousness of the announcement and Hayward’s basketball legacy will be elevated. It will be considered a success.
But there will always be that ‘what if’ factor. After Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey tore the Jazz down in 2012 and built the roster back up, Hayward’s Jazz were arguably the best NBA team to call Utah home since Stockton-to-Malone, and at least the best since 2007. They have one of the league’s premier big men, who is all of 25 years old, one of the league’s best coaches, and a rotation that is even deeper than it was a year ago.
No player in franchise history has been as good as Hayward, and in his prime, and left the Jazz by choice. Just when the Jazz were starting to take off, he left to go strike out on his own. I think that’s the biggest reason Hayward’s departure will be so bitter for some Jazz fans — for years the Jazz carefully constructed a team from the ground up, with Hayward at the center of the build, and now with his decision to move on the plan is obliterated.
The Jazz will move on, too, though the wonder of how good this team could’ve been will linger for a while, and that’s the part of Hayward’s departure that I’d imagine for a lot of Jazz fans will sting the most.
