Gordon Hayward’s surge makes Boston Celtics’ recent success feel sustainable for a change

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2019/04/gordon-haywards-surge-makes-boston-celtics-recent-success-feel-sustainable-for-a-change-tom-westerholm.html



Gordon Hayward’s surge makes Boston Celtics’ recent success feel sustainable for a change




| Tom Westerholm
Updated 6:43 AM; Today 1:02 AM






(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)



By Tom Westerholm | twesterh@masslive.com



INDIANAPOLIS -- On Friday, Gordon Hayward claimed a small piece of Boston Celtics history: With his 23 points on 9-for-9 shooting in a 117-97 win over the Indiana Pacers on Friday, he became the first Celtic since Kevin McHale to score 20 points while finishing perfect from the field.

Hayward smiled when asked for his reaction to that obscure (but undeniably complimentary) bit of trivia.

“I ... don’t know how you guys find all that stuff,” Hayward said, to general chuckles from the assembled media (the answer: The Celtics’ stats account tweets it out). “More important was that we got the win tonight. Great job by us. Big win.”

Hayward was half right: It was a big win, and the Celtics did play as well as we have seen them in recent memory.

But saying the win was “more important” than his individual performance doesn’t quite square with reality. The win wasn’t more important, but rather it was intertwined with Hayward’s big night, as so many of Boston’s wins over the last few games have been. A win over the Pacers is nice for the Celtics, and the now-likely prospect of home-court advantage in the first round is even nicer. But having a healthy, nearly fully functional Hayward back on the floor may be what the Celtics have been missing all season.

On a night when one game meant home-court advantage, that somehow upstaged the playoff seeding stakes.

There’s a hesitance to declare Boston’s problems fixed, and quite frankly, there should be. Believing the Celtics have turned a corner would mean believing the team has kicked its habit of winning three encouraging games before dropping three gruesome ones. That’s a leap of faith most observers aren’t ready to take yet.

Except this time, there’s a new variable: Gordon Hayward might be back for real.

Some numbers for you: Over the last five games, Hayward is shooting 64.4 percent and 42.9 percent from behind the arc. Pushing that back to 20 games (to minimize the impact his unsustainable 9-for-9 performance had on his shooting percentages), he has shot 56.5 percent and 40.8 percent from three over his last 20 contests, averaging 18.4 points per 36 minutes.


“He’s obviously attacking with great physicality, but that’s what he does,” Brad Stevens said. “He’s playing really well. He’s still not forcing anything that’s not there. He had a couple of times that he could have forced it and he just kicked it out and let the next guy make the play, which is the right play. So it’s good that he’s playing this way. He feels good, and we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and he’ll have a lot of opportunities to make plays for himself and more so for others.”

After Wednesday’s win over the Heat, Al Horford said Boston is starting to figure out how to play off of Hayward, which is noteworthy. Much has been made of Hayward’s struggles, but his teammates needed time to adjust to him, and that appears to be happening.

But the Celtics have always been good when Hayward is good, as has been noted ad nauseum. An update on the numbers: They are now 21-4 in games when he scores 14 or more points and 25-3 when he shoots 50 percent or better from the field, and they are 4.5 points per 100 possessions better when he’s on the floor.

When Hayward is clicking, the Celtics look a whole lot more like the team everyone expected them to be prior to the season. If your defense stifles all of Boston’s perimeter threats, keeps Horford away from the rim and pries the ball out of Kyrie Irving’s hands, you now have to deal with Hayward powering his way through contact and getting easy baskets in the paint. That also leads to free throws -- Hayward has the best free-throw rate of any of Boston’s guards and wings.

In other words, Hayward is scoring and defending at a high level again. Teams might not be shaking in their Nikes at the prospect of facing the inconsistent Celtics yet, but believing in this team’s potential now -- with a very functional Gordon Hayward back on the floor -- isn’t crazy any more.

Hayward was asked about his finishing in the paint on Friday.

“That’s a lot of what I did when I was in Utah, finishing in the lane with different types of finishes off one foot, two feet, fade-back, things like that,” Hayward said. “Some is slowly coming back, some is more explosive and can handle the contact a little better, staying on balance. It’s coming together nicely, and I have to continue to attack and get to the line.”

Utah Gordon Hayward? If you are searching for reasons to be back in on the Celtics, that descriptor is as good as they come.



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