Much was made about Gordon Hayward‘s decision (or indecision?) to join the Boston Celtics, after an early-afternoon report by ESPN's Chris Haynes that he had chosen to join the Eastern Conference regular season champions.
The new addition to the team was adamant the hold up on his official announcement was not due to him finishing his self-written article in The Players' Tribune.
“That was definitely a hectic day,” he told D.J. Bean of CSN New England. “My mind was just in all kinds of different places that day. I think it’s definitely fair to say that I was leaning towards Boston, but at the same time, we hadn’t figured it out, and I was going back and forth with (agent) Mark (Bartelstein), and we were really discussing throughout the day different reasons why or why not I should go to a different place.”
“I was literally on the phone with Mark when the story broke online, and I’m looking at my phone, I’m getting blown up saying I’ve decided to become a Boston Celtic, and as everybody knows, it was all over the internet.”
Bartelstein and the Utah Jazz organization denied any formal announcement being made by either party, putting his “official” announcement on hold for over five hours.
“At that point in time we decided, look, we have to step away from this. I was pretty upset that that had happened,” said Hayward. “I didn’t feel like I was ready to say, ‘Yes, I want to be a Boston Celtic,’ so I had to take a step back and regroup and I think we talked about it more and more, then finally we put out the article, but I know there was a lot of reports with people saying we were finishing up the article for the Tribune, which is just completely false.”
“I had a ghostwriter that I was talking with throughout the course of my visits, and I was sharing my thoughts the whole time. It was one of those things where once I made a decision, it was like five minutes [to] finish up and we were ready to go.”
Haynes was ultimately validated after many fans questioned his initial report, despite it being seconded by many other sports writers — ultimately pulling out the most-fitting “I told you so” tweet of the offseason.
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) July 4, 2017
After the whole fiasco, Hayward wishes it could have happened differently, but can remain at peace with his choice to reunite with his old college coach Brad Stevens and start a new venture eastward.
“I’m kind of bummed how it happened, but in this day and age, that kind of stuff goes on and there’s not much you can do about it.”
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