If Indy wanted Hayward so bad they could easily have matched the Charlotte offer and continued negotiating with Boston. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that Hayward's agent, a very good player agent, wouldn't have offered Indy a chance to match Charlotte's offer.
All the stuff coming out of Indy seems like a PR smokescreen to me. It takes three parties to do a sign and trade and Gordo wanted money that Indy looks like they didn't want to pay him. That's the story right there. Everything else is white noise.
It is getting pretty annoying in this thread that people just assume with 100% certainty that Ainge/Pritchard could have gotten this deal done before Hayward's agent actually explored possibilities beyond IND. Sure, I buy that Hayward was interested in going to the Pacers, but the only other team (besides BOS) that he ever actually signed with in the past was CHA; it's just that UTA matched that contract.
Hayward signed for the most money with a franchise/city that he apparently likes. Would I rather have Turner/McDermott/a 1st? Of course, but that seemingly was never in the cards.
Since Danny rejected that offer, I guess we will never know with absolute certainty. I tend to trust the word of a long term, respected GM when he goes on record though.
I hope that interview with Pritchard isn't indicative of who he is as as a professional - it wasn't very becoming. You are right that we may never know, but I find it hard to believe that Hayward's agent was just ready to accept a deal w/ IND w/o searching for potentially better offers. As nick noted above, if IND was willing to pay $30M/yr, then he would probably be there right now.
But even then there are no guarantees. It was seemingly important for Hayward to spread his wings and show he could be an All-Star/best player on a team again. That wasn't going to happen in BOS or IND. He may have been willing to give up that up to go back home to IND (and getting out of Boston asap), but apparently not for less money. It seems Pritchard and Ainge probably made assumptions about what Hayward really wanted w/o taking into account that it really was up to him in the end.
Charlotte was looking at other players, it was only when those fell through and Hayward was still out there that they moved back in. Had Boston and Indiana made a trade on the first day, Charlotte never would have been in play and they were really the only other team that had any real interest in Hayward. So if the trade would have been done, Hayward would be a Pacer. It was because Boston and Indiana couldn't reach a deal that allowed Charlotte to move back in when their other targets went off the board and Charlotte knew they had to pay more than Indiana to get Hayward. They had to pay the premium because Hayward wanted to go home. I do wonder what would have happened had Charlotte not moved back in.
I'm dubious about your representation of how this went down.
The FA period opened up at 6 pm on Friday. That was the earliest that any team could talk with Hayward without permission from the Celtics. You can almost bet that Hayward's agent was on the phone with other teams at that point, whether they called him or he called them.
It's almost certain that Hayward's agent quite rightfully would never have agreed to any deal with IND or BOS before at least testing interest from other potential suitors. He would be the worst agent on the planet if he did not do so.
Hayward said the next day that Michael Jordan called him later that same Friday evening to '
close the deal'. That means that there were some sort of conversation between Hayward's camp and the Hornets earlier that evening, but after 6pm, enough to establish mutual interest before bringing in MJ to 'close the deal'. And the whole thing took only a few hours between when Free Agency officially opened and to when the deal was 'closed'.
The above are basically facts of record.
What I suspect went down is that his agent got the offer from CHA fairly quickly after 6 pm. He then probably went back to IND and BOS to look for a counter offer and those two teams probably said it was out of their price ranges. And then the deal was closed shortly after with MJ's call.