Pacers wanted Hayward, but the price was too high
BOSTON — On the morning of Nov. 22, Gordon Hayward agreed to a four-year, $120 million contract with the Charlotte Hornets, one of the more surprising free agent deals in the past decade, with many NBA executives and experts befuddled at the amount of money Hayward earned after three injury-filled seasons in Boston.
The Hornets were desperately seeking respectability and significance. The Celtics would have preferred to have Hayward return, but not if it would have placed the franchise in the luxury tax or had four players on the roster earning at least $30 million per season.
The Pacers wanted to acquire Hayward, and Hayward told the Celtics he wanted to go to Indiana. The catch was the Celtics and Pacers needed to agree to a signand-trade deal to make it happen. They couldn’t agree, and then Hornets owner Michael Jordan placed a call to Hayward on Nov. 21, promising a lucrative deal.
Hayward accepted, and the Pacers and Celtics ended up with nothing besides contentious trade discussions.
Indiana president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard acknowledged the Pacers “pursued as hard as we personally could” for a Hayward trade.
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge wanted Myles Turner, according to NBA sources, but he also wanted Victor Oladipo or T.J. Warren to complete the deal. Pritchard balked at that demand.
What casual observers have tended to ignore is Hayward needed to agree to such a deal. If he didn’t, there would be no deal because he had opted out of the final year of his contract and was officially a free agent. While Hayward wanted to go home to Indiana, the Pacers would
have had to agree to pay Hayward in the neighborhood of what the Hornets offered.
If the Pacers would have packaged Turner ($18 million) and Warren ($12 million), and the Celtics then signed Hayward to a four-year package at $30 million annually, the trade would have fit perfectly. The Pacers did not agree to such a deal.
“Other than that, between the two teams, I always feel like that’s very private,” Pritchard said of the trade parameters. “The one thing we did differently … we talked to our own players and let them know. We tried to be very proactive and extremely transparent, when it was out there.
“Yes, we pursued. It didn’t work out. If you can add a player that materially improves you, you have to take a shot. And we’re not afraid to take a shot. It hurt a little bit more this time because the feedback was that he wanted to be here. We were probably overpaying in the trade, but we were willing to try to get a special player.”
Pritchard made it clear Ainge’s asking price of Warren and Turner
was too much.
“We’re going to try to improve the roster,” Pritchard said. “But it can’t come at a cost that’s so debilitating that it doesn’t make sense. We felt like we’ve got a lot of very good players on the team and plans to stand pat was a very good plan. There will be a time where there’s turnover. But unless it made us materially better, like a no-brainer trade where were going after an A-list star, we were going to do that. Other than that, it had to be a complete no-brainer.”
As for Charlotte, the Hornets have in the past paid generously for veteran players, but those deals failed miserably. Nicolas Batum signed a five-year, $120 million extension after being acquired from the Trail Blazers, and he never came close to making an All-Star team.
The Hornets are trying to dump the final year of Batum’s contract ($27 million) and would have loved for the Celtics to take that in a sign-and-trade for Hayward. That wasn’t happening. The Hornets also dumped Marvin Williams and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist in the final years of their contracts.