What a dozen free throws said about Hornet Gordon Hayward’s return to vintage form
The best thing about Gordon Hayward’s career-high 44-point scoring game: 12 free-throw attempts.
Hayward carried the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday in a 102-94 road victory over the Atlanta Hawks. This team — and particularly the starting unit — had looked terrible offensively in a three-game losing streak. The veteran small forward making $120 million over four years sure looked worth that price in this game.
This was the Hayward from his NBA youth, playing for the Utah Jazz — throwing his body at the rim and daring opponents not to foul. Back before Hayward suffered a gruesome injury his first game with the Boston Celtics, dislocating his left ankle and fracturing his left tibia in 2017.
When Hayward opted out of the last season on his contract this summer, one of the questions about his market value was his willingness to attack the rim with reckless abandon. His average free-throw attempts were six per game his last three seasons in Utah. He averaged fewer than three free-throw attempts with the Celtics.
Those 12 free-throw attempts Wednesday — his most since April of 2019 — suggest vintage Hayward, in both ability and mentality.
“What I saw tonight was his aggression — from start to finish,” Hornets coach James Borrego said. “I thought he was fantastic tonight. He set the tone from the start.”
Spectrum of skills
The Hornets went to a lot of trouble to acquire Hayward; not just use up their $20 million or so in salary-cap space, but stretch the remaining $27 million on Nic Batum’s contract to open additional cap space. That was bold, but the Hornets felt they needed a player of Hayward’s skill and experience to knit together a very young team.
Hayward is known for savvy decision-making with the ball. That’s important to Charlotte, but at least as valuable was someone to bail them out of bad possessions with the shot clock running down. Someone used to taking shots of huge consequence.
That’s just what he did in the first half Wednesday. He scored or assisted on 11 of the Hornets’ 19 field goals. The rest of the Hornets did their parts on defense — holding the Hawks to a season-low 11 points in the first quarter — and Hayward kept filling up the rim from all over.
Hayward scored in every way conceivable: Fifteen baskets, four of them 3s. Put-back baskets. Transition baskets. Made 10-of-12 free throws. He also had seven rebounds and two assists.
“With everything that has gone on for me in my career injury-wise — I’ve put in a lot of (rehab) work — it was a lot of fun,” Hayward said.
What they needed
It’s far too soon to conclude whether Hayward’s contract will be cost-effective. He’ll be 34 and completing his 13th NBA season when the last $31.5 million of the deal is done in the spring of 2024.
Here’s what we do know: In these first eight games he has delivered exactly what general manager Mitch Kupchak was shooting for in pursuing him: An influx of skill, experience, savvy and poise. Add aggression to that list Wednesday.
“He understood we needed pressure taken off our (other) offensive guys,” Borrego said. “He went and took the pressure.
“And he delivered.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 11:56 PM with the headline "What a dozen free throws said about Hornet Gordon Hayward’s return to vintage form."
