Revisiting a rejection

Hayward returns to face franchise he impacted with a no

MIAMI — The last time Gordon Hayward visited AmericanAirlines Arena on official business it proved to be a livesaltering event.

Hyperbole? Not when you consider the butterfly effect of that free-agency meeting with the Miami Heat on July 1, 2017.

Because not only did Hayward ultimately decide to sign with the Boston Celtics, but the moves made in the wake of that decision continue to resonate — for better or worse — for the Heat.

“I mean,” center Kelly Olynyk said, “who knows where any of us would be right now otherwise?”

In the wake of Hayward bypassing an offer that the Heat thought, at the close of that meeting, sealed the deal, Pat

Riley and his personnel staff moved swiftly to sign Olynyk away from the Celtics and re-up with Dion Waiters, James Johnson and Wayne Ellington.

Eighteen months after that fateful decision, Hayward is scheduled to be in uniform for the first time as a Heat opponent when the Celtics visit AmericanAirlines Arena for Thursday’s national televised game on TNT, having been sidelined last season with a broken leg.

Had Hayward’s decision been in the Heat’s favor during 2017 free agency, it is possible Olynyk is still a Celtic and Johnson and Waiters never realize their $50 million-plus contracts in July 2017 that have them on the Heat books through 2020-21.

“It’s a domino effect,” Olynyk said. “Now all the pieces fall all over the place somewhere else.”

Had Hayward opted for the Heat or even to return to the Utah Jazz, the Celtics likely would have kept their qualifying offer in place to Olynyk and kept him a restricted free agent, a cap hold they instead had to relinquish to sign Hayward to his four-year, $128 million contract.

“I don’t even know if the Heat would have offered me an offer sheet,” Olynyk said. “So you never know what happened. If he didn’t sign there, maybe I would be back in Boston now.”

From his perspective, at least from a financial perspective, Olynyk said it worked out for the best.

“It was honestly probably the best thing for me that he did, the best scenario,” Olynyk said. “Because then I got to go wherever I wanted.”

The irony of that summer morning was that Johnson was working on the Heat practice court when Hayward was touring the facilities at AmericanAirlines Arena with coach Erik Spoelstra and Heat players Justise Winslow, Udonis Haslem and Hassan Whiteside.

“I was part of that, trying to bring him here, not recruiting stuff, but when he came in the gym, I was already in the gym,” Johnson said of the interaction. “I was just like, ‘It’s a nice place to be. The culture here is great.’ ’’

All the while, Johnson was stuck on hold, positioned to cash out after a breakthrough season but uncertain whether the money would be there from the Heat.

“In my mind,” Johnson said, “there was no doubt in my mind that my time was coming. I had a pretty good year.”

Then there was Waiters, who said after Tuesday’s loss to the Denver Nuggets he already had a working plan in place to take another one-year Heat deal had Hayward signed, pushing back his payday that instead arrived that summer.

“You know me, it’s bet on yourself and double down,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I got a family, I got a kid. But when you’ve been grinding your whole life, you sometimes have to be patient. I told myself that in the worst-case scenario, I would get an even bigger contract the year after.”

To consider how much hung in the balance, consider the piece Hayward posted on the Players’ Tribune after making his Celtics decision, “My meetings with all three teams during this process — Miami, Boston and Utah — were just unbelievable. They couldn’t have been more impressive. Each meeting left me convinced that the team I’d just met with was the right fit.”

For the Celtics and Heat it has been an uneven ride since, Hayward having been moved to the Celtics’ second unit, the Heat stuck in a cycle of .500.

Kevin McHale, the Hall of Fame former Celtics forward and former NBA coach and general manager who will call Thursday’s game for TNT, said the Hayward experience is one that remains uneasy for both the Celtics and Heat.

“There’s no question they’ve been funky up to this point,” he said of the Celtics. “Part of it is a lot of guys vying for time.”

And of what has been left of the Heat in the wake of Hayward’s decision, he said, “It’s very hard to say who they are.”

TWITTER The Heat went all in when it came to the free-agency recruitment of Gordon Hayward during the 2017 offseason.

WILFREDO LEE/AP If Gordon Hayward opted to sign with the Heat or even to return to the Jazz, the Celtics likely would have kept their qualifying offer in place to Kelly Olynyk, above, in 2017.