The 2017-18 season was supposed to be a big one for Gordon Hayward. Having developed his game in the backwoods of the Western Conference with Utah, his numbers showed maturity through each of his seven successive seasons, until the Celtics found him ripe for the picking in the offseason. Thus, Gordon followed up a campaign during which he made his first All-Star team, by landing a four-year $128 million deal to play alongside Kyrie Irving in Boston. But all upward projections came to a screeching halt when he suffered a gruesome injury that looks to have put him on the shelf for at least the remainder of the year, in the season opener on Tuesday night, October 17.
If there is one man who could inspire Hayward to begin a journey of restoring his faith and grinding towards a comeback from such demoralizing adversity, its Kobe Bryant, who had similar doubts cast over the remainder of his career when he ruptured his Achilles tendon in 2013. Kobe would return midway through the following season, before finishing his career with a complete campaign in 2015-16. Hayward's future is looking grim. Just as he comes into his own on one of the NBA's most storied franchises, in the prime of his career, he dislocates his ankle and fractured his tibia. But Kobe is here to urge that the 27-year-old star stand taller than ever when he gets through hanging his head.
"Be sad. Be mad. Be frustrated. Scream. Cry. Sulk. When you wake up you will think it was just a nightmare only to realize it’s all too real. You will be angry and wish for the day back, the game back THAT play back. But reality gives nothing back and nor should you," the Lakers great wrote, in a message he posted for Hayward on his Instagram page on Wednesday, October 18.
"It’s a long journey but if you focus on the mini milestones along the way you will find beauty in the struggle of doing simple things that prior to this injury were taken for granted. This will also mean that when you return you will have a new perspective. You will be so appreciative of being able to stand, walk, run that you will train harder than you ever have. You see the belief within you grow with each mini milestone and you will come back a better player for it," he then continued on to tell Hayward, before signing out, "#MamabaMentality always."
