OAKLAND–Two hours before the Golden State Warriors planned to tip off the regular season against the Houston Rockets, one of the Warriors’ top title challengers suffered a devastating blow.
In the first quarter of his debut with the Boston Celtics, high-profile free agent acquisition Gordon Hayward suffered a gruesome leg injury that forced him to be carried off the court. Hayward and the Celtics figured to figure prominently into the Eastern Conference playoff picture, and it’s unclear how the nature of Hayward’s injury will impact Boston’s season.
Minutes after the injury occurred, Warriors’ head coach Steve Kerr spoke with the media and addressed a question about how Golden State would respond to being the heaviest title favorites in American sports history. In the midst of his response, Kerr mentioned Hayward’s injury, and said the Warriors’ coaching staff was devastated after watching Hayward go down.
“I always tell the guys there’s a reason you pour champagne on each other’s heads because it’s really hard and stressful,” Kerr said. “So we’re prepared for that, we have a core group who has done it over and over again. We try not to pay too much attention to what anybody says. And this stuff is so fragile. I just watched Gordon Hayward fall down and injure his leg. Terrifying. The whole coaches’ office was just devastated watching it. It just shows the fragile nature of what we do. You put yourself in the best position to succeed and win and you go for it but there’s so many things that can happen.”