Do You Wish We Had Never Signed Hayward?

[ozgod]

Logical answer now would be no.
But at the time we signed the best FA on the market entering his prime years. Max deal was his deserved market price.
The fact that he broke his leg just 5 minutes in his 4 year max deal, doesn't change those facts for me.
We got really unlucky.

For the sake of argument, I'll just flip OP's question a bit.
Do You Wish We Had Never Signed Michael Jordan?
If we signed MJ entering his prime and he got injuried immediately, I wouldn't say that it was an ill concieved move.

Just tough luck.
That's what we got here.

With the benefit of hindsight it's certainly worth questioning whether we should have signed him if he was only going to get injured and take up $30m a year. But I think more to the point would be, how many of us thought his contract wasn't worth it at the time it was signed. Based on the actual threads from then there weren't many.

Hayward is such a great player - https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=93341.0 -

Gordon Hayward: We're getting more than I thought... - https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=92418.0

Done: Hayward Announces He's Joining Celtics - https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=92372.0

This guy was probably one of the few who was against Hayward from the start. He and of course our No.1 Hayward Fan here who shall remain nameless

Celtics Better off without Hayward? - https://forum.celticsstrong.com/index.php?topic=92351.0

It's certainly important to re-evaluate and review decisions made so that, with the benefit of hindsight, you can make better ones in future. In this case I find it hard to blame Ainge for the decision he made, but in hindsight it hasn't given us the ROI we were expecting for $30m and now it's turned into somewhat of an albatross unless he substantially improves next season. If he doesn't improve next season then we can say that it was ultimately a waste of money.

[ozgod]

Logical answer now would be no.
But at the time we signed the best FA on the market entering his prime years. Max deal was his deserved market price.
The fact that he broke his leg just 5 minutes in his 4 year max deal, doesn't change those facts for me.
We got really unlucky.

For the sake of argument, I'll just flip OP's question a bit.
Do You Wish We Had Never Signed Michael Jordan?
If we signed MJ entering his prime and he got injuried immediately, I wouldn't say that it was an ill concieved move.

Just tough luck.
That's what we got here.

Paul Millsap was also available for the max, but I think many here would go crazy if that happened and not in a good way.

I remember I spent the majority of my 4th of July refreshing Twitter/Celtics forum for the Gordon Hayward decision. Oh how much time has been wasted when you realized months later. The gruesome injury, and then the recovery year off the bench.

Next year is no excuse for Hayward.

And he had that whole fiasco of "yes he signed, no he hasn't...wait he's still deciding...still deciding..." 

[bopna]

With 2 yrs already gone, the ROI is at the very most has been paltry.. Even if GH becomes a 15 ppg scorer in the next 2 yrs, its still a bad signing...i actually feel GH will be a 12/4/3 kinda guy if AD comes but if not maybe we can jack up his scoring slightly to 15..not bad but certainly not the max player we all expected.

No excuses for Hayward anymore.. He must produce something... He has right now no trade value but if there is a team out there that will take on his salary and is a willing trade partner then I hope Danny Bites the bullet and trade his ass.

Those multiple 2 point performances during the regular season and in the Bucks series certainly has traumatised me...even then he really does not and should have no excuses for such a pathetic performance.

[konkmv]

hayward was and is an excellent pick.. you cannot foresee the future... he was the perfect teamate  for irwing ana al... they wanted to play with kyrie brown hayward tatum and horford... the issue is that tatum is not the new durant to play pf... irwing is not a pass first guard... so you have defense, rebounding an creation problems... they thought they can convince them change their play... they failed
and you have the rozier and morris boys who never passed the ball.. hayward for me was the perfect teammate... our problems started elsewhere

[Silky]

hayward was and is an excellent pick.. you cannot foresee the future... he was the perfect teamate  for irwing ana al... they wanted to play with kyrie brown hayward tatum and horford... the issue is that tatum is not the new durant to play pf... irwing is not a pass first guard... so you have defense, rebounding an creation problems... they thought they can convince them change their play... they failed
and you have the rozier and morris boys who never passed the ball.. hayward for me was the perfect teammate... our problems started elsewhere

I think Utah hayward and irving are a bad fit
Horford should not be a fulltime center.

Team did not expect tatum to get good.
Team did not expect to get irving in such a cheap deal amd they tried to make it all work.

Boston was great last season over the 60 games irving played. They played to the best win percentage in nearly a decade for the team.

This year they added back hayward, irving played 67 games and the win percentage over thise games dropped....alot...

Only real change?

Hayward
Rozier whining and complaining
Baynes iften injured
Horford playing more center.


There is the root of the issues

[Sophomore]

I wish we hadn’t signed him ... because that would’ve meant we got KD the year before.

[jambr380]

I've seen it more in recent posts, but the purpose of this exercise is to have have hindsight, not decide whether it was a good or bad signing at the time. As oz points out above, almost everybody heralded it as a fabulous signing when it was made.

It's also not to necessarily figure out who else you would have given the max to (Paul Millsap has come up a couple times). The money could have been spread among other non-max worthy players or we could have pushed much of it down the line. We should also be looking at the contributions Hayward has given us these last two seasons vs what other players might have contributed.

I really need to emphasize that this is not a referendum on Hayward or what kind of person you are if you vote against the signing; it's simply asking if you would have rather spent the money differently. And, as pho points out, if Hayward hadn't signed here, he would still be putting up monster performances for another franchise - that would be awesome for him.