Salt Lake City is salty with Gordon Hayward deciding not to return to the Utah Jazz this summer. It hurt Jazz fans to see their star player walk away to Beantown. No matter how many jerseys they burn, Hayward’s departure pains them as much as it puzzles them to this day how Mehmet Okur managed to become an All-Star.
Hayward has his reasons, though, which we try to speculate on below.
Before anything else, let’s be clear that Hayward didn’t technically leave Utah. True NBA fans who are following the offseason closely know that Hayward’s contract with the Jazz simply expired this summer, making him a free agent. It’s not Tracy-McGrady-running-off-the-court-in-the-middle-of-a-game kind of stuff.
For bitter Utah fans, that preface is garbage. They will always remember the summer of 2017 as the time Hayward left them hanging in the cold, thathe “LeBron-ed” them. But Hayward going to the Boston Celtics was something people could see from a mile away. There were always pros and cons in whatever it was that Hayward would decide to do as a free agent, but the Celtics just appeared to be the best destination for him.
Jumping across to the East appears to be a sound decision for Hayward since transferring to the opposite conference would free him from the eat-or-be-eaten West that will likely be ruled by the Golden State Warriors for most of what’s left of Hayward’s prime years.
And that’s not counting the beefed up Houston Rockets, the perennially great San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Oklahoma City Westbrooks Thunder that now have Paul George, and a Minnesota Timberwolves squad that has undergone a facelift this offseason. added to the list of teams Hayward has to go through if he is to come out on top of the West. Meanwhile in the East, the Celtics don’t have to tackle those teams in the East playoffs, with the Cleveland Cavaliers as the only the legitimate roadblock for a team that certainly has the manpower and enough talent to take down the Toronto Raptors and the Washington Wizards.
Reuniting with an old friend apparently was a big factor for Hayward. With Hayward back in the same fold as old college coach in Brad Stevens, the two could together pursue what they failed of winning at Butler, which is a championship. Hayward even mentioned that in his “Goodbye Utah” piece that appeared on The Players’ Tribune site. Hayward simply felt it was too good to pass up another team-up with someone that he’s long considered family.
