Friday’s press conference in Boston has been mostly centered around the fact that Kyrie Irving is now a member of the Celtics. But Irving isn’t the only new member of the team to meet the media, as the Celtics used the event to introduce their other massive offseason addition, Gordon Hayward.
It’s a fun event to watch if you’re a Boston fan, but if history played out a little differently, this wouldn’t have been the first time that Hayward and Irving would have played together in the NBA. Hayward told a story about how the pair wanted to team up in Cleveland when he was a restricted free agent in 2014, but thanks to LeBron James‘ decision to come back to the Cavaliers in free agency that same offseason, that didn’t happen.
LEBRON JOKES https://t.co/txgMvgwIUt
— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) September 1, 2017
“I went to Cleveland on a visit when I was a restricted free agent,” Hayward recalls. “And Kyrie came in and was saying how much fun it would be if I was on the team, and kinda recruited me to go there. Then LeBron came and that kind of squashed that whole thing. But it came full circle and here we are now.”
Of course, everything worked out for everyone involved — Hayward developed into one of the league’s top wings as a member of the Utah Jazz, while Irving and James teamed up to bring the Cavaliers to unprecedented heights, including a championship in 2016.
But this is one of those scenarios where it’s possible to ask what would have happened if history played out a little differently. Maybe if James was unable to get past the way his first stint in Cleveland ended, the Cavaliers would have made a strong push to add Hayward, one that would have scared the Jazz off and meant that Irving and Hayward became teammates in 2014. Further, this may have meant that Cleveland would have kept Andrew Wiggins and built around him as part of a young core. And who knows where James would have ended up — maybe he sticks in Miami, maybe he goes to one of the New York teams, or maybe he ends up playing for a team in the Western Conference.
It’s all a “What If?” scenario, but in the most obvious statement of all time, the NBA landscape — especially in the Eastern Conference — would have been much different if Cleveland landed Hayward instead of James.
