Boston Celtics veteran forward Gordon Hayward might not be on the team had he not chosen to play tennis, it seems.
Talking on the TrueHoop “Bring It In” podcast recently, Celtics head coach Brad Stevens related an interesting tidbit about the recruiting process he had with Hayward as head coach of Butler — and how his intensely competitive nature kept him off the radar of other teams just long enough to get the Indiana native to sign at the mid-major college.
Hayward wasn’t heavily recruited at first, a “late bloomer”, according to Stevens, who first crossed paths with the future Boston swingman while the Butler product was still a junior in high school.
“[The Haywards were] the first family that sat in my office, as a recruit,” he began. “We didn’t offer him a scholarship at the time.”
But after a chance to see him play, Stevens had a change of heart.
“Right after the workout [we] called his high school coach and told him he had a scholarship offer to Butler. And you know, from that point on, it became a little bit of a fight with some other schools just because he, he blew up quickly.”
But Hayward quickly made up his mind, committing to Butler after just six weeks — and didn’t play any A.A.U. ball over the summer, which likely helped keep the All-Star forward from being sniped by a blue blood program.
“He played tennis that summer to try to try to win a state tennis championship,” observed Stevens. “So he was really under the radar.”
“We were fortunate that he was and and then I think one of the benefits of that is is that when he got to college, it was really the first time that he had focused solely on basketball. So there was a real passion for it, and a real passion to work at it,” he explained.
Hayward and Stevens would go all the way to the brink of an NCAA championship together, Hayward’s late heave against Duke bouncing out at the literal last second.
Boston's Gordon Hayward was a goofy, intensely competitive teenager https://t.co/G1bnqC1cdj
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) April 16, 2020
The bond the pair forged all those years ago was most certainly a factor in the 30-year-old forward’s decision to sign with the Celtics in the summer of 2017.
And it’s certainly possible that had the young prospect played A.A.U. ball that summer, minds could have been changed about his college of choice as well.
Tennis — and Hayward’s obsession with winning — may have helped set Boston’s current roster composition in motion in one of those ‘what-if’, butterfly effect moments.
We’ll just have to be happy things worked out as they did.
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