CelticsBlog · Jan 18, 2019
Hayward doesn’t need his peak athleticism to be effective
Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesIn 2017, his last season in Utah, Gordon Hayward became the league’s most unlikely high-flier. He finished 68 dunks in 72 games played, cramming alley oops, dunks in traffic, and flushes in transitioning, almost exclusively jumping off two feet and finishing with both hands. The scrawny kid with a bowl cut from Brownsburg, Indiana couldn’t stop dunking on everyone.
Only ten non-centers dunked more than Hayward that season. But after his dislocated ankle and fractured tibia, Hayward has become largely a below-the-rim player. In his Player’s Tribune docuseries, he admitted he “won’t be the same player.”