How The Boston Celtics Will Survive Without Gordon Hayward

Five minutes and 11 seconds. That's all it took to take the Celtics' dream season and set it ablaze. It takes longer to walk a block in New York City. It was a full 35 times shorter to watch Boston's season take a turn for the worse than it was to watch The Revenant once. No matter how you spin it, this dream season that has been three months in the making for Boston came crashing down in a matter of minutes after Gordon Hayward suffered a fractured fibula and a dislocated ankle in what was one of the most gruesome injuries you'll ever see.

Will it be easy to replace a player like Hayward? Of course not. He was one of the crown jewels of the off-season and a pillar for this team’s future for a reason. Yet just by looking at the rest of this game, you can clearly understand that this is not the end of Boston’s success this season. With enough talent and leadership on this roster, it’s not going to be a year where Celtics fans are circling the start of the 2018 season and distracting themselves by muting the words “Hayward,” “dynasty,” and even “Isaiah Thomas” on Twitter. It will be a year with similar aspirations, a quiet understanding of what they’re up against, and a whole lot of patience.

Patience quickly comes to mind when thinking about the two players who now have more on their plates than originally planned, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The sky is the limit for both of these players and expectations were already too high for even Brown to leap over them, but they now have to fill in on both sides of the court for one of the better players in the conference. That’s a lot to ask of players who are just 19 and 20-years-old, but as you saw, if you didn’t bail on the Celtics game, as well as their season, after just a few short minutes, you got to see why the hype has flown around two kids who can’t even legally buy alcohol.

Being legal age would probably help deal with the idea of playing without Hayward, but having the abilities of Brown and Tatum on your roster has to be enough to boost your team’s confidence. Their performances were clearly overshadowed by the news that will follow this team around all season, but this was the coming out party Celtics fans were hoping they’d see this season.

It would’ve been an ideal scenario to have Brown and Tatum develop for a season before a big slab of the burden lands on their shoulders, but this one game shows they have the talent as well as the poise to handle it. Brown had his best game yet, putting up a career-high 25 points, six rebounds and three steals on 48.8% shooting. His ability to create during fast breaks are going to be must-watch highlights for the entire season, while his potential to cover the best player on the court no matter what position they play might be the best thing that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet for Boston this season.

As for Tatum, it’s safe to say his debut landed him in some pretty elite company.

Losing Hayward for the season is unimaginably horrific for Boston, but having Brown put up the best performance of his career, while Tatum matches Larry Legend the first time he puts on a Celtics jersey, really quells the pain.

It won’t just be the two young guys that will have to step up, nor will all the pressure land strictly on Kyrie Irving’s lap. One person who is going to not only receive a ton of pressure, but will welcome it, is Marcus Smart.

Smart is the NBA version of Jekyll and Hyde. A title once owned by JR Smith, the league’s Jekyll and Hyde is represented by a player who can bury their team under the hardwood and then bring them back from the dead, Undertaker style, all by themselves. The only proof you'll ever need is tonight's game.

After starting the game 0-9 from the field in the first half and jamming the knife that was already in the hearts of Boston fans deeper into their chests, Smart grabbed the defibrillator, and jolted this fan base back to life. He finished with 12 points, nine rebounds, three assists, two steals, two blocks, and what could only be described as a lifetime of hustle plays all in the second half. He may fire up some threes this season that truly may crack the backboard and delay the game a number of minutes, but there will be no vocal leader on both ends of the court like Smart.

What Smart brings to the table just like Brown and Al Horford is versatility. Having a number of players who can switch on defense and cover a number of positions allows Brad Stevens to leave his guys out on islands where they force bad turnovers. Hayward was supposed to be a staple in this defense, but Boston had no problem forcing 17 Cleveland turnovers, leading to one of the Celtics’ biggest strengths this season, the fast break.

The immediate thought is that this team has to go back to the drawing board now that Hayward is out. While that’s normally the case, that ink from the marker hadn’t even dried on that board with the game plan. Boston’s brand-new team was considered an obstacle they had to overcome, and it still is. Yet it still should be oddly comforting to consider the Celtics won’t have to adapt to life without Hayward. This injury would’ve hurt at any time during the season, but now the Celtics have 81 games to learn who they are while creating the right style that can turn the tables on the Cavaliers.

Stevens may have his toughest task yet on his hands, but this team was not reliant on just one guy. It’s not like he’s going to hand the ball to Irving, shrug and go back to watching highlights of his beloved Hayward to the theme of The Titanic. Kyrie Irving does not have to play hero ball for the next six months like he did during the miserable section of his career known as “pre-LeBron James.” He will clearly still be the primary scoring option as he would’ve been if Hayward hadn’t gone down, but he still has a number of options to lighten the load.

This Celtics team was not designed to be a two-headed monster. Sure, two of those heads may stick out larger than most, but there is still enough firepower on this team to propel them past the majority of the teams in the East. Before you pronounce this team dead, give Stevens, Irving, and the rest of this team a shot. They surprised everyone tonight, and they’ll continue to do so all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals.