The Celtics aren't counting on Gordon Hayward's return this season, but ...
When Gordon Hayward suffered his horrific injury six minutes into his debut Boston Celtics season, ankle dangling like Hans Gruber from the Nakatomi building at the end of “Die Hard,” it seemed fairly obvious that he would miss the entire 2017-18 season, if not face career-threatening rehabilitation.
In the hours and days that followed, there was optimism that Hayward’s condition may not have been as traumatic as initially feared. There was a clean break and no damage to the cartilage, which were both signs he would return to full strength. A source with direct knowledge of both Hayward’s pre-surgery condition and the healing process of similar injuries told me back in October of the possibility he returns this season, “You never know. It’s not like an ACL.” The possibility existed, in other words.
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Then came the successful surgery and the team’s statement: “No timetable has been set for Hayward’s return, but he is expected to make a full recovery.” The words “season-ending” were nowhere to be found, but both Hayward’s agent Mark Bartelstein and Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge tempered any excitement, suggesting the team shouldn’t count on Hayward this season.
But there’s a difference between not counting on somebody and ruling them out entirely, and the Celtics were careful to do the former, taking pressure off the All-Star in his rehab, so as to avoid persistent questioning from media and fans about his status, while also not casting all hope aside.
All of which brought us to this weekend, when Hayward conceded to The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach in a wide-ranging interview that the thought of returning in 2018 hasn’t escaped him:
“It’s definitely in the back of my mind. I’m definitely pushing to get back as fast as I can, while making sure that I still have a lot of good years of basketball in me. And coming back early and hurting something else is not part of that plan. So I’m making sure that if I come back, I’m 1,000 percent confident in myself and my leg. I hope more than anything I can play this season. That would be awesome. But that’s not something I’m stressing about. I’m stressing about what I can do today to help myself get better.”
[…]
“I feel like for me it’s better to just tell myself, ‘Let’s be better today than I was yesterday,’ and then keep doing that day in and day out. And if it happens to get to the point where the season’s still going on and I can play, then, like, that’s awesome.”
That came on the heels of some social media sleuthing that revealed Hayward was not wearing his walking boot, at least for a brief video-game session, and Ainge telling 98.5 The Sports Hub that his prized free-agent acquisition was “a couple weeks away from being permanently out of the boot.”
“I know that down inside he wants to be back faster than anybody has ever been back from this kind of injury,” Ainge added. “He’s got a competitive streak to him and he’s asking lots of questions.”
It was only natural that speculation about Hayward’s status swirled again, even as Himmelsbach outlined the many steps between removing the walking boot and even participating in practice: “He plans to slowly progress from an exercise bike to an elliptical to an anti-gravity treadmill. Then he will start running on a court, and then he will try to work on change-of-direction drills.” Then, non-contact work, 1-on-1, 3-on-3, 5-on-5 and maybe, just maybe, his return, still so far on the horizon to see now.
So, upon the first media availability following Himmelsbach’s sit-down with Hayward, before Boston beat the Pistons in Detroit on Sunday, Celtics coach Brad Stevens faced the first serious inquiry about the 27-year-old since the surgery, and he confirmed that no-pressure-but approach we presumed:
“He’s got to find any motivation that he can find. … We’re certainly not going to put limitations on what he tries to do,” Stevens told reporters, via MassLive.com’s Jay King. “That being said, we’re not planning on him. All (of the talk from Hayward) is really good because it indicates that he feels really good about where he’s headed and he should. And that he’s going to be fully healthy when he does get back out on the court, which he should. So that’s the positive of it but we don’t want to put that on him. And so we’re assuming that that will not be the case.”
Assume the worst, hope for the best. That way the Celtics can’t be disappointed this season.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
