It was a scene Jazz Nation had witnessed many times. Gordon Hayward, deceptive in speed and strength, swooping in to take an alley-oop pass and drive it home.
Seconds later, it was a scene no nation should see, an image so disturbing that other players couldn’t bear to look.
After a collision with LeBron James three feet off the ground, Hayward came down awkwardly on his left foot, leaving it bent outward like a broken doll. As Hayward grimaced on the court, his foot was limp on the floor, seemingly with little or no bone structure connecting it to his leg. Six minutes into his career as a Boston Celtic, his life had suddenly changed.
And, just like that, it no longer mattered that Hayward had broken our hearts when he left town abruptly less than four months ago. Now, the man on the floor was our guy again. As the outpouring of support from Utah shows, the connections formed during his seven years on the Utah Jazz were too strong to deny.
Hayward joins the ranks of athletes whose injuries were horrifically captured on video. The grandfather of that club is Joe Theismann, an NFL quarterback whose tibia was snapped in a gang tackle in 1985. Theismann never played again.
Hayward’s injury was diagnosed as a broken tibia and a dislocated ankle. In this world of modern orthopedic medicine, there is a good chance he will play again, but it’s a wide open question as to when and how well. The Celtics lured him away in part because of that ability to soar. Will he still be able to reach those heights?
We have seen his determination over those seven years. We saw him learn hard lessons on the way to building a complete game and becoming an NBA all star. Now he’ll be watched like a reality show contestant to see if he is grounded by mortality or lifted to the category of miracle case.
Fans in Utah join the rest of basketball in hoping it’s the latter. The NBA and its fans need him to #stayward.