Part of the reason Hayward has been erratic is that he usually only gets a reasonable high number of shots in the flow of the offense if he really has it going. I am sure Gordon Hayward had games with Utah where he started off 1-6 or 0-4 but still ended up with 9 or 10 more shots which is enough to turn it around.
Even last night int he minutes that he got, I thought Hayward when he was clearly hot from my perspective, deserved the ball passed to him for shots 3-4 more times which would have probably gotten him 2-3 more high quality shots.
Hayward is still not the same old Hayward athletically but he is better athletically than some folks on this forum are suggesting. He would be dunking more and with more authority if he hadn't gotten injured but he is more than good enough with the occasional screen to be quite often the main conductor in Stevens motion offense. He really does that well. He is kind of like a more dynamic Horford in terms of ability on offense but with much less postup ability himself.
I just looked it up and Hayward in his last season in Utah playing in the tougher western conference had around 50% more dunks for his shot attempts and remember he did this with teams treating him as the #1 option to focus in on. And he did this on a team that played a slow pace so less easy fastbreak dunks..... He wasn't a great dunker but a pretty good one. Something is still obviously wrong with his leg when he says he can "deal with it" -- probably with meds and physical therapy -- but it reacts differently than his other non injured leg in terms of soreness -- perhaps bruising if I heard Hayward correctly -- after games. I'd be very interested to know if George went through the same thing in terms of how his leg reacted after games. Is this a sign that Hayward's surgery more difficult?
Stevens still has plenty of time but last 10 games of season, I'd really try to establish Hayward as more of a focal point. Not to get him to even average 18 PPG but to help get high percentage looks for Tatum and Brown on cuts to the basket and to make it tougher for teams to blitz and focus on Irving. If defenses have to really be concerned with Hayward like teams facing Utah had to be, it will open things up for other players. Tatum has the ability to hit some tough shots but during this season, McHale was right that he should avoid the fallaway type shots whenever they have a high degree of difficulty at least. It makes sense to add that to your arsenal when you have more respect of the refs and are likely to get foul calls when you use that threat to setup other moves. Tatum doesn't have that yet.
At this point of the season, it is rather obvious the relative strengths of the players and I think Stevens has to try to install Popovich like discipline. Tough for a relatively young coach to do. You don't want it to regimented since Celtics don't have Stockton/Malone/Jeff Hornacek playing years together and have more players with 1 on 1 ability but at the same time, players like Morris/Brown/Tatum, I don't think should be initiating the offense in the halfcourt. They should have Irving/Hayward/Horford/Smart/Rozier(when he plays) trying to create easy looks for them.
