« Reply #452 on: December 08, 2020, 10:02:46 AM »
There's a really good series of tweets from Bulpett discussing Hayward's role on the team after Tatum and Brown's emergence, and why he was interested in leaving. Here's the start of the series:
https://twitter.com/SteveBHoop/status/1333907919373561867
It's basically something I've been wondering about for a while. Hayward signed on to be a featured player together with IT. Then suddenly we had Kyrie, which still could have worked for him as a duo. Once he went down though in his first game and Tatum broke out, and then Tatum and Brown carried that group to the ECFs, everything changed. In retrospect according to Bulpett if the Celtics knew what they had in Tatum they would have never committed 128 million dollars to him:
https://twitter.com/SteveBHoop/status/1333907921223241728
Bulpett goes on to speculate that Hayward's value to the current group was to keep the ball moving and keep them from falling into iso ball. He believes that Tatum and Brown's continued maturation and improved playmaking should be able to compensate for that.
When I think about Tatum's development as both a scorer and passer plus Kemba's abilities with the ball, and how much I like Smart's intensity in the starting unit, the more I thought that Hayward's best role this season would've been as a 6th man. Come off the bench as the the primary ballhandler for the second unit, tearing up other team's benches.
Because when the best 5 is on the floor, Hayward is the 3rd or 4th scoring option, the 3rd or 4th ballhandling option, and there is positional overlap with guys who are better than him. The bench would've made sense but he's overqualified and overpaid for that. So now he's gone.
Oh well.
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