All season long, Boston Celtics fans and NBA commentators alike have speculated whether Gordon Hayward’s uneven performance stems from persistent vestigial pain from his gruesome opening-night ankle injury in October 2017, which kept him from participating in a 2017-18 Celtics campaign that culminated one poor-shooting-quarter away from the NBA finals.
Our definite answer to that question came from the man himself, in a Bleacher Report piece that dropped today:
“I think most of that is probably from a lack of confidence in going to the basket and challenging bigs—especially at the beginning of the year.