The Charlotte Hornets have had a rough go of it so far this season, as the team has been without young All-Star LaMelo Ball for most of the season with an ankle injury he suffered in the preseason that he recently aggravated stepping on a fan’s foot.
Without Ball, there’s a talent deficit for the Hornets — one created in large part due to losing Miles Bridges this offseason after he pled no contest to domestic violence charges in Los Angeles — and that only gets worse with the most recent news that Gordon Hayward is out indefinitely due to a fracture in his shoulder. That news was relayed by his wife, Robyn, after being listed on Friday’s injury report as out with a “shoulder contusion,” which seemed to tick Hayward’s wife off enough for her to post to her Instagram Story that the Hornets were withholding the severity of the injury after having him play through it in the last game — with her noting he struggled to move his arm at all while playing.
Robyn Hayward would then go back and post another story clarifying the injury as well as noting that she’d spoken with a young player’s mom who agreed the team was “not protecting players.”
This is not a good look for the Hornets for a couple of reasons. First for the fact that they are not disclosing the extent of Hayward’s injury despite clearly knowing it’s a fracture, which one might think the league could look into. And second for the assertion that they are playing players despite injuries when they aren’t fit to play and not taking any care to protect them while injured. We’ll see what the fallout of this is, but it’s not often you get a player’s spouse calling out the team so directly like this.
