It's hard to remember, but Hayward was an elite wing last year. He was not some fringe all-star, he was a superb scorer and good at pretty much everything else. Even if it takes time for him to come back to 100%, the expectation should be that he's going to be 2nd to Kyrie in terms of being a primary scorer and primary ball handler next season.
Except that's pretty much exactly what he is, a one-time allstar who was a ho-hum 20 ppg scorer in heavy minutes for the most part of his productive career.
I love Haywsrd and think he will be a tremendous addition to this team, but yeah, he is pretty much a borderline All-Star. He averaged over 20 PPG only once 7 years in Utah, his TS% is a pretty average 56.3% for his career. He never averaged 6 RPG as a SF. Only once did he average over 4.1APG.
He will fit in seemlessly but given Jaylen's improvement arc and Hayward's possible need to ease into things, Jaylen could be this team's second scoring option next year.
Haywards best year so far was a solid all star year, but I do think you are right in that Hayward him self is more like a solid #2 option then a number one. Hes not a truly élite offensive player. Add in hes going to basically have gone a year without being able to work on his game and he'll be coming of an injury and he may regress slightly. Even then I think its more likely that next year Jaylen will be the third option, but I dont think you can rule out that Jaylen over takes him next year ir the year after
Yeah, can't argue this enough: we are forgetting how good Hayward is.
The year before he joined us, he averaged 22ppg, shooting about 40% from 3 (on 5 attempts), 50% from 2, and 84% from the line. He was 19th in the entire league in offensive win shares, and 18th in offensive box plus/minus. In other words he was a really, really good offensive player, someone who could score a high volume of points efficiently.
Keep in mind I'm only talking about his scoring. He also happens to be a good passer, ball-handler (Stevens was thinking to use him as the primary ball-handler on the second unit this year), and a versatile defender.
I'm super optimistic about Brown and Tatum. But don't let the passage of time dim your memory of how good Hayward is.