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“I’m just looking at the picture and crying”
“That’s not supposed to look like that”
“I’ve been staring at the wall depressed for the past hour”
This was the scene in the group chat with all my friends on October 17, 2017, the first game of the Boston Celtics’ season and the night Gordon Hayward broke his leg. It also might be the inflection point of Celtics history.
Hayward retired on Thursday, four years removed from Boston and seven from the injury that many fans can’t help but remember. His Celtics career was far more than his injury, but it remains the most potent “what if?” of the decade and — paradoxically — was a fundamental part of the Celtics’ 2024 championship. It was the moment that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s rises began, and sealed the fate of the Hayward-Kyrie Irving core that would lead to the latter’s departure and the eventual construction of the championship roster.
So as we say goodbye to Hayward’s career, I wanted to remember how we felt at that moment and decide what it all means seven years later. His injury was so tragic and unforgettable precisely because he already meant so much to the Celtics, and to me, he still does. And he became so much more to the Celtics than a broken promise. He asked us to believe in him, and we did.
Perhaps more shocking than the texts themselves was the fact that all my friends were watching. We are all Celtics fans, sure, but it was unusual that we would all make time for a regular season game, even if it was the season opener. But that was the gravity of that season; we had never been more excited.
Gordon Hayward was not joining the Celtics as an additional contributor to an already-contending team. He had just put together the best season of his career for the Utah Jazz, was just entering his prime and was supposed to be Boston’s second-best player behind Irving. He was supposed to be the solution, and he gave us that promise himself.
Hayward’s decision to sign with Boston on July 4, 2017, remains one of my most cherished Celtics moments. In my young memory, the Celtics had never signed a big free agent. Years before, I had to deal with local radio conspiracy theories about LeBron James, but to no avail. In 2016, I had been convinced by photos of Kevin Durant walking and talking with Tom Brady that he would come to Boston, but it wasn’t to be. But Hayward had picked us. Someone had finally picked us! And it looked like, for real this time, the Eastern Conference might not just run through Cleveland.
But Hayward as the savior only lasted five minutes. Everyone watching at home knew immediately that his season was over. The Celtics’ next big three, consisting of Hayward, Kyrie Irving and Al Horford, would never get to show its teeth. Today, it’s impossible to simulate the feeling of confusion and anger mixed with the undeniable understanding that life wasn’t fair. It was that bad.
Everyone on the court felt like my friends and I. Players looked away in horror, huddled together to regroup and tried anything to recover from this moment. But even the Cavaliers fans felt like we did. The dream of a city and a team had been shattered by a freak accident, and it only took an instant.
The only other emotion from that night I remember was denial-fueled hope. I had put so many eggs in this season’s basket that I refused to believe it was just over immediately. Jaylen Brown, the then-mostly-unproven forward who stepped up when Hayward went down, scored 25 points in 40 minutes, and prompted me to send this text to the same group chat:
“We have learned that Brown is a god”
Perhaps even more consequential, though I didn’t know it at the time, was how Hayward’s injury gift-wrapped the Celtics’ starting Small Forward position for rookie Jayson Tatum. Having to watch one of the pillars of his team go down five minutes into his NBA career must have been dizzying, but Tatum took the new responsibility in stride. Seven years later, I wouldn’t change a thing about his career. But if you asked him today, I bet he’d want those first five minutes to have ended differently.
Hayward’s Celtics career was so much more than his injury. He was a valuable contributor on two Celtics teams and undoubtedly was a veteran mentor to the two young forwards that just won Boston a championship. But he was never the savior that Celtics fans wanted him to be. He no doubt wanted that himself.
Hayward will always be a dream deferred for Boston, and we’ll never know what history would have been like if he hadn’t gone down. I’ll remember his Celtics career for the injury, sure, but also for the promise he gave us and the commitment he showed in the face of a body that refused to cooperate. He could have simply sulked around for his next two seasons and resigned himself to obscurity, but he worked tirelessly to reshape his career into something he and Celtics fans could be proud of.
For that, I’ll continue to believe in him.
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