Gordon Hayward will officially become a member of the Boston Celtics later this week, once the team finishes making requisite moves to clear max cap space for him. The process of Hayward choosing to sign with the Celtics over the Jazz and the Heat was a roller coaster ride, however.
The NBA world saw the ending, in which news leaked of Hayward’s decision to go to Boston prior to him being ready to make the announcement via a Players’ Tribune article, causing his agent to shoot down the reports and threaten to have the decision pushed back. After five hours went by following the initial report, Hayward dropped his post confirming he was leaving Utah for the Celtics.
Throughout the process, Hayward’s agent Mark Bartelstein did his best at keeping all parties happy, despite the disruption that came from the initial reports of Hayward going to Boston prior to other teams, namely the Jazz, being notified. On Wednesday, Bartelstein went on The Russillo Show on ESPN Radio and explained exactly how the entire process went down for Hayward leading up to his decision, including how he was so swayed by each meeting he had that he called after each one to say he wanted to sign there.
That’s a long story. Basically, really what happened was, obviously this entire process was gut-wrenching for him. Utah has done an incredible job of really building a world-class franchise and they’ve taken great, great steps over the last couple years to emerge as one of the top teams in the West. So, that was a great situation for Gordon. He wanted to have the opportunity to take a look around in free agency. There was a lot of work done prior to July 1 to really identify the situations that we thought could possibly equal or exceed the Utah situation which we were so comfortable with. We had narrowed it down early on with Utah, Miami, and Boston and thought we have three great situations. Boston and Miami have proven they’re capable of winning championships and great coaching and a great front office.
So, he went and took his first visit with Miami on Saturday and literally, when he walked out of there — they did a great job, Pat, Spo, and Andy Elisburg and the presentation they put forth — and Gordon called and said, ‘My god, I think this is the spot. I can’t imagine anything being better.’ And he was wowed.
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So he got on the plane and went to Boston, and had a great visit with Brad, and obviously the relationship is really strong, and with Danny and the players. There’s obviously something special about the Celtics and the aura and playing for the Celtics. And he walked out of that and called me and said, ‘This is a wrap. This is it. This is the place for me.’ So, I said, you felt that way yesterday about Miami and brace yourself because I know they’d been planning for this.
And Dennis and Quin and I had spoken at length about what was important to Gordon and what would dictate this decision, and they hit it. They hit a home run. Utah came in and they nailed everything they could nail to make Gordon feel like this was the place he needed to stay. It also got very emotional, they brought the teammates in, and he grew up there. He became a man there. And they had a 3.5 hour meeting and when he left, he was shaken. And he was back thinking ‘I can’t leave Utah.’ We were on the phone really late on Monday night and he was really leaning towards staying with Utah, but he was exhausted.
When we got back on the phone, I felt he was sort of starting to lean towards Boston just as he got some clarity on it. As that happened, as we were having that conversation, my phone started blowing up that there’s a report that Gordon has made the decision that he’s going to Boston. I don’t even know where it came from. It’s hard to believe someone can write something without checking with the sources that were making that decision. It caused a firestorm at that point.
He was very upset, obviously. He didn’t want it to come out like that and he hadn’t made that decision. … There were three different versions of what we were going to do [with the Players Tribune article], because he kept changing his mind. And the final version was just going to add in the last paragraph of what we were going to do.
It’s an incredible peek behind the curtain at how a free agent’s mind has to deal with making this decision and how after each meeting, at least with Hayward, he was blown away and wanted to sign on the spot. Eventually, he settled on Boston as his destination. I fully believe that Hayward was torn throughout the process and did indeed change his mind four times.
However, the last part of his comments about Hayward genuinely not being completely set in his decision when the first reports came out or not feels a bit more far-fetched. Bartelstein came after the NBA reporting landscape that promotes people running with scoops to be the first to news, but it’s very hard for me to believe that as many reputable reporters confirmed that news, that the sourcing wasn’t from someone in the know and that it just happened to get out before notifications had been made to the teams.
