CLEVELAND — The entire tone of the Celtics' season changed with 6:45 remaining in the first quarter against the Cavaliers on Tuesday night when Gordon Hayward landed awkwardly under the basket at Quicken Loans Arena.
The crowd's silence said everything. Security guards rushed to surround Hayward, who suffered a fractured ankle that's on the short list of most gruesome basketball injuries of all time. The images won't be easy to shake for those closest to it.
"I have never seen anything like that happen to anybody," Boston rookie Jayson Tatum said.
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Cleveland's Jae Crowder hung his head. Tatum sank into an impromptu team huddle. LeBron James split the security guards to clutch Hayward's hands. Arm-linking, head-shaking, blank-staring disbelief all around. It's easy to forget about the score — Cleveland won 102-99 — when you can't forget about that scene. Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving saw this once with Paul George on Team USA. Irving wouldn't respond to the shock value.
"Everybody saw it, c'mon now," Irving said.
You can't unsee that. Hayward left on a stretcher to a round of applause, and with that any value to a rematch of last year's Eastern Conference finals. Boston players prayed together. At that point, Celtics coach Brad Stevens didn't have much to say.
"I don't have any magic words for that," Stevens said. "We're all hurting for him. I'm not going to try to take the human element out of it."
It's hard to recalibrate to basketball when an injury like that happens, and the Celtics didn't do that until midway through the third quarter against the Cavaliers. Boston clawed and made a game of it, but the Hayward injury became the first season-shifting storyline.
With that you wonder what the landscape in the Eastern Conference looks like without Hayward.
Signing Hayward, drafting Tatum and trading for Irving was supposed to be the combination that helped Boston close the gap on Cleveland, which is seeking a fourth straight NBA Finals appearance with LeBron James, who scored 29 points with 16 rebounds and nine assists. The Cavs needed just five games to dispatch the Celtics last season.
This was supposed to look different. For six minutes, it looked pretty damn good. Irving opened the game with a runner, and then Hayward scored. Jae Crowder hit a 3-pointer, Dwyane Wade a turnaround and Derrick Rose a layup in transition. James hadn't even taken a shot yet, and this looked like a future Eastern Conference finals worth watching.
That's when Hayward hit the ground. Like that, the tone changed.
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The Cavs threatened to run away with it before the shell-shock wore off Boston. It looked like another run-of-the-mill, James-orchestrated blowout, but the Celtics fought back and made it a one-point game heading into the fourth quarter.
"At the end of the day there is still a game to be played," Irving said. "As s—ty as that sounds, there's a game to be played. We understand that as professionals. We just picked the rest of our guys up."
That's when we got a look at what this will be in 2017-18. It's still pretty damn good.
James swatting shots from behind. Irving drilling 3-pointers. Tatum and Jaylen Brown making plays. Fierce back-and-forth play everybody came to see in the first place.
The Cavs, however, made the plays in the end. James muscled in for a layup, knocked a ball off Marcus Smart's leg and set up Kevin Love's game-clinching 3-pointer. Boston had a chance to tie, but Jaylen Brown and Irving each missed 3-pointers in the final seconds.
"I didn't have my legs under me," Irving said.
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That's the challenge for the Celtics now — to get past this. Irving's immediate focus shifted toward where it should be – on Hayward's recovery. It's Stevens' job to help navigate this team around that, and it's clear with Irving and Brown — who combined for 47 points — Boston has the talent to get back to the Eastern Conference finals. Cleveland, however, remains the standard. The Cavs showed that again with a new supporting cast around James.
Without Hayward, the Celtics face an uphill battle to close that gap. There are no magic words, and we'll get the first clue as to how that will look against Milwaukee on Wednesday. Once the shock value wore off in the first quarter, Boston showed fight.
They're going to need a lot more where that came from. Perhaps the home opener will set a different tone. What happens now with Hayward gone?
"The injury was tough," Irving said. "We had to pick ourselves up and continue with the season as best we can until he's back with us. We know G is going to be fighting to get back on the court. We just need to keep fighting."
