The re-recruitment of Gordon Hayward to the Boston Celtics had more layers than an onion can offer this summer, with years of history engrained between the prized free agent forward and his former Butler University head coach Brad Stevens, now four years at the helm of the Eastern Conference top seed.

Stevens recounts the time when he first recruited Hayward to play for Butler, asking himself if just mere potential would be enough to warrant a scholarship offer.

“I was there when he was a puppy, when he was a junior in high school and he was a good tennis player and nobody was recruiting him [for basketball]. And it was like, ‘You think we should offer that guy a scholarship? Nobody's looking at him. Nobody's even in the building,'” Stevens told ESPN's Chris Forsberg.

“It was probably a good decision, in retrospect. He's awfully good.”

Things didn't start off so well, though, as Hayward was proudly donning a Purdue hat and shorts during his tennis match.

“I went and watched him play tennis, and he was a top 8 or 9 player in the state of Indiana,” Stevens said. “And the one time I saw him play, he got beat, and he was wearing a Purdue hat and Purdue shorts, so I wasn't very happy with him after that day.

“You saw the physical tools, and you know the mental side of things is high level. Then it was a matter of when he starts really committing himself to basketball full time, how good can he get? Question answered.”

If it was weird to have a fascination with a head coach, know that the feeling goes both ways, as the 40-year-old play-caller still remembers a young Hayward sitting in his office, about to make a life-changing decision, just like the one he made at the beginning of this month.

“I think that it's a really an unbelievable thing to be sitting with a guy in your offices when he's 16 or 17 years old in the [college] recruiting process then to again be sitting with him when he's 27 years old and to see just the change and the maturity and the great questions and the thoughtful ways that he was looking at all of his options and all of his opportunities,” Stevens said. “Trying to talk to him about why we thought this was a really good situation for him.”

Come the Fourth of July, Stevens was just as nervous about his decision as the rest of the organization and Celtics' faithful along the country.

“I sat and waited with my fingers crossed,” he said.