The Utah Jazz will look to get back to .500 as they take on the Boston Celtics in the Gordon Hayward’s much-anticipated return.
Can you hear that? It kind of sounds like the whistling the wind makes sometimes? That is actually the sound of Utah Jazz fans everywhere practicing to boo Gordon Hayward upon his return to Salt Lake City.
Real quickly, let me just share my two cents about the Hayward return. The way that Gordon Hayward left the Utah Jazz was definitely not in the best taste. He didn’t give them a reasonable understanding of what his thoughts were, the news was broken early and he quickly denied them only to announce his decision in a lengthy players tribune article a few hours later. We later learned that he never contacted many in the Jazz organization to announce this news, most notably, Gail Miller.
Utah Jazz players treating Gordon Hayward’s expected return to Salt Lake as just ‘another game’
— Deseret News Sports (@desnewssports) November 8, 2018
Story by @E_Woodyard https://t.co/syUj5sMD9J pic.twitter.com/NYvCHatWKy
When it comes to free agency, I have always been on the side of the players. The whole reason the NBA has free agency is so players can have a fair chance to play wherever they would like. If Gordon Hayward did not want to play in Utah, we should not have wanted to have him play in Utah.
In addition to that, if teams can trade a player at a moments notice with no regard for the person, why shouldn’t the player be able to do the same to the team?
At the end of the day, I think Jazz fans deserve the chance to boo Gordon Hayward. He deserves to truly know how Jazz fans everywhere think about the way he left things. After we have booed him though, I hope that we can move on. I always hated when we continued to boo Deron Williams six years after he essentially forced a trade from the team.
Now, on to the reason we are actually here. The game.
The Utah Jazz got off to a fairly promising start to the season. While there were definitely some kinks to iron out, they jumped out to a 4-2 record, and were a buzzer-beating tip away from downing the Warriors and being 5-1. They then proceeded to lose four in a row, and looked completely lost at times.
Looking to right the ship and hoping to carry on the momentum after a solid win over the Dallas Mavericks, the Jazz will be taking on the Boston Celtics. The Celtics boast one of the most talented rosters in the entire league, and the Jazz will need to be firing on all cylinders to compete with them.
There are two things that they will need to accomplish to magnify their chance at spoiling the return of Hayward.