No silver lining
Cloud of Hayward’s injury not going away
CLEVELAND — The sunrise forecast in Boston calls for clear skies and temperatures in the 50s. And, according to the National Weather Service and any number of immutable laws regarding the Earth’s rotation, the sun will, indeed, rise.
But for the Celtics, a cloud lingers.
It appeared with 6:45 left in the first quarter last night and enveloped them in a manner that rendered insignificant anything to do with a basketball game or its outcome.
The Celtics staged a gritty comeback from 18 points down to lead by three with two minutes left? The Cavaliers ripped it back in crunch time for a 102-99 win? Under most circumstances, this would have been a heartbreaking loss, but really, who gives a damn?
During and following the affair, the Celts were feeling concern for Gordon Hayward, who is lost for who knows how long because of a fractured left ankle suffered in gruesome fashion. And no matter how much they know intellectually that they have to suck it up and move on, they have not yet been replaced by robots.
Five minutes and fifteen seconds into Hayward’s Celtics career, the summer’s prize free agent went up to collect a lob from Kyrie Irving. The connection was missed, and Hayward came down awkwardly. As Jaylen Brown collected the loose ball and scored to give the Celts a 12-9 lead, Hayward writhed on the floor, his ankle turned grotesquely to the left.
Those on the court looked then looked away. As medical personnel rushed out, the Celtics gathered by their bench. Irving buried his head on Marcus Smart’s shoulder. Smart and Jayson Tatum hugged him back.
“The first thing that we did was we brought everybody in on the court,” Al Horford said. “It was important — you know, we were all dealing with a lot of emotions — to just kind of make sure everyone’s staying together and just keep it going.”
He acknowledged a moment’s feeling that maybe you just don’t feel like playing basketball right now.
“It just really ... it hits hard,” Horford said. “But then you look at the other guys on the team. You still have a game to play, and there’s no easy way around it, but we have to rally up and just think ahead. So that’s what we did as best we could tonight.
“It’s hard. It’s hard to see one of your teammates go down in that way. You know, I felt like it took us a little bit to get back going again, but we tried to stay together out there.”
Hayward, meanwhile, had his left leg immobilized and was taken by stretcher to the Cavaliers’ locker room compound, which contains the arena’s more complete medical facilities. A short time later, former Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas, one of the main recruiters in getting Hayward to Boston, left the Cavs bench.
“I was with him the whole time back there,” Thomas, out indefinitely with a hip injury, said later on his way out of the building. He spent time exchanging greetings and hugs with coach Brad Stevens, assistant GM Mike Zarren and other Celtics personnel.
Thomas paused when talking about Hayward.
“It was hard,” he said. “It was hard.”
Hayward had missed a 3-pointer. He had hit a 9-foot fallaway. He had fouled Jae Crowder and later rebounded a missed trey by Crowder. Those will be his only stats for a while.
The reunion with Stevens, the critical scoring addition to the offense, the glorious growing pains as Hayward and Irving and Horford worked with frightfully young members of the rotation during the next months, all of it has been put on hold.
At 8 p.m. Eastern, the Celtics had dreams bordering on quietly held plans of making it to the NBA Finals.
At 11 p.m., they had an 0-1 record and the sense that everything had changed. To what degree they couldn’t be certain. They couldn’t yet know or understand. They will get more of a sense when Hayward, taken by an early flight to Boston and directly to New England Baptist Hospital last night, is examined further.
From the time Hayward went down and replays hit social media, well wishes poured in from around the NBA. Teams and players tweeted in support.
“I think everyone understands that it’s more than basketball,” Horford said. “And over the years, guys, we get to know every guy in the league, and we never want to see anybody get hurt. And it shows a brotherhood in the league. You saw the guys on the other side, how they came up to Gordon and make sure that he was fine.”
What Horford meant to say is the Cavaliers simply were checking in with Hayward to offer a positive word or touch, for he will not be fine for a while.
Nor will the Celtics. There is another game tonight against the Bucks at the Garden, and they will play hard because this is their job. But this is not something that will go away in a day. They will have to work through this injury to a teammate and what it does to their hopes for the season. They will grapple with this. “Yeah,” Horford said. “We have to pull through more than ever. Obviously we wish Gordon is able to have a speedy recovery and get healthy again. And then from our end, we just need to regroup, and different guys will have to step up, and that’s what we’ll do.”
Horford admitted, however, that it won’t be easy to navigate through this cloud.