Gordon Hayward is a family guy, calming force and an overdue connector for Hornets
Ron Nored would have to give Gordon Hayward a kick in the pants, when they were teammates at Butler, to be more fiery.
Back then, around 2009, Hayward was gifted, but placid: The term “gamer” more applied to his choice of entertainment than his passion to dominate.
“Gordon was completely fine staying in his room all day and playing video games,” said Nored, now a Charlotte Hornets assistant coach. “We used to make fun of him all the time because he would just sit in his room with his headphones on and snack on chips.”
Imagine Nored’s surprise recently when Hayward erupted at a Hornets practice that wasn’t going well.
“To watch Gordon stop, bring his group together, and tell them what needed to be done in that moment? I was just, ‘Wow!’’ “ said Nored, a guard on Butler’s 2010 national finalist team.
“To command the room? Command a group? That was something I did not see (coming).
“That’s exactly what the Charlotte Hornets have needed.”
The Hornets are paying small forward Hayward $120 million over four years to be something special: A scorer, a facilitator, a calming force for a young roster. A connector.
Hayward says he left the Boston Celtics in search of a bigger role. He will certainly find one with the Hornets, which is both the fourth-youngest roster in the NBA and a franchise that hasn’t been to the playoffs in four seasons.
Hayward plans to play in Wednesday’s season opener, despite having a fractured right pinkie finger. The Hornets signed him with expectation of big things: That he would be the conduit to maximize the talents of young guys P.J. Washington, Miles Bridges, Devonte Graham and LaMelo Ball. That he’d also bail them out of bad possessions.
That he’d help reset the trajectory of a franchise that’s been mostly irrelevant of late in the NBA, beyond the fame of owner Michael Jordan.
What does Hayward think about all that?
“What I’ve always tried to do is make everyone around me a little bit better,” said Hayward, a 2017 All-Star entering his 11th NBA season.
“You can do that in a lot of different ways. Maybe it’s just being in the right space. Sometimes, it’s a simple swing pass. Sometimes, it’s getting into the paint and setting somebody up for something easy.”
The Hornets’ average age this season is 24. Hayward is an outlier: Three months from his 31st birthday and the father of four with his wife, Robyn. Much as he loves the NBA, home is his No. 1 priority.
“My family is my life. We have four kids now,” Hayward said. “Basketball is my job, but they’re why I do it.”
He is also different from other Hornets in that he has a proven record of winning at the NBA level.
“Everywhere he’s been, he’s won,” said coach James Borrego. “He impacts winning: He’s a veteran, he’s a playmaker, he’s got (6-foot-8) size.”
And he’s a calming force wherever he goes. Everyone seems to say so.
‘Pretty laid-back’
Nored suspects then-Butler coach Brad Stevens had him and Hayward room together for their contrast in personalities: Even-tempered Hayward and excitable Nored, who occasionally had to prod Hayward to be more an alpha-male. Nored recalled a Butler game where Hayward was so excessively unselfish that he finished with just four shots, despite being clearly the best player for either team.
There is a similar contrast in personality now in Hayward’s marriage with Robyn.
“My wife certainly balances me out a little bit,” Hayward said. “She is a little more emotional and maybe more urgent with certain things. That’s probably why we’re a good fit.”
Hayward was an engineering major, and that reasoned problem-solver persona follows him on the basketball court.
“Pretty laid-back, but analyzing everything,” Hayward said in self-description. “Trying not to emotionally overreact or under-react.”
Nored said Hayward has evolved as a player over 10 seasons with the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics, but there has been one constant: His anticipation of what will happen next is so precise that he plays with an efficiency — a smoothness — that radiates to the betterment of teammates.
“He sees things before they happen, and because of that he’s in no hurry. He makes the right read,” Nored said. “If that means passing it 20 times, if that means shooting it 20 times, he just has that great feel about him.”
That’s particularly beneficial on a team with as many as six rotation players with two or fewer seasons of NBA experience. New teammates keep using the word “calm” to describe the effect Hayward has had on practices and the two preseason games he played before he broke his finger.
“There are times we can get out of control as a young group,” Borrego described. “Someone with his experience, his IQ, his size — I’m more comfortable as a coach with him out there.
“I’m not sure we’ve had that luxury here.”
‘Fresh start’
Of the dozens of NBA free agents this offseason, Hayward was arguably the biggest name to change teams. An NBA.com survey of the league’s 30 general managers named Hayward coming to Charlotte as this offseason’s most unexpected move.
Money was a big factor: The Hornets outbid the Atlanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers and Celtics. But this was about fit, too: The opportunity to have the prominent role Hayward thought he’d have in Boston, and a franchise and community where he and his family would be comfortable.
When Hayward left Utah for Boston, the expectation was he’d be a star for his former college coach, Stevens, now overseeing the Celtics. His first game as a Celtic, Hayward suffered a dislocated ankle and fractured tibia, which took most of a season to heal. In the interim, two young teammates, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, blossomed at such a fast rate that Hayward became the fourth option at best by last season.
He opted out of a guaranteed $34 million salary this season to explore free agency.
“I wanted a fresh start. I wanted a place where I could try to maximize who I was as a basketball player,” Hayward said. “Boston has a lot of great players, especially on the wing position: Guys who can do a lot of different things, like myself.
“I just wanted to kind of maximize what I was.”
That was a more complex decision for a family guy with school-age children. He would uproot his family, in a pandemic, without the normal three summer months between free agency and training camp to settle in. That has weighed on him, he said, moving across the country and trying find a new school for his kids.
Instead of three months for the Haywards to settle in, they had to do it in 10 days.
Hayward called Nored and Hornets center Cody Zeller (a fellow former Indiana high school star) before his decision, asking them to be straight with him about the situation. They told him he’d find both the Hornets and Charlotte full of genuine, decent people.
“No one ever has anything bad to say about Charlotte. That made me feel really good and my wife feel good, too,” Hayward said. “(Robyn) was certainly stressed about the move, but because of everything that was said about Charlotte, that has put her mind at ease a little bit.”
Now, it’s Hayward’s task to put the Hornets and their fans at ease: That he’s that skilled, that savvy, that much a connector.
“The thing the casual fan would struggle to understand? When the ball is in Gordon’s hands, the right play is made all the time,” Nored concluded.
“There is something very calming about that as a coach.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Gordon Hayward is a family guy, calming force and an overdue connector for Hornets."
