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Gordon Hayward Says A Return Later This Season ‘Definitely In The Back Of My Mind’

You simply can’t imagine a worse debut than what Gordon Hayward had to live through in his first game as a Celtic. After only about five minutes, Hayward went down with a horrific ankle injury.

The entire NBA community was shaken up and came together. A huge amount of tweets, thoughts and prayers from NBA players reached Gordon Hayward. While we saw the reactions of Cavs and Celtics players inside the arena as it happened, we also got reactions from other players like Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry.

The Boston Celtics immediately announced that Hayward would be out for the season. But was that diagnosis a little bit premature?

Earlier this week, it was reported that Hayward is about two weeks away from being completely out of his walking boot. This was great news, and it seemed to also have caused a lot of optimism for Hayward. The forward now said that even a return this season is in the back of his mind.

Via Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe:

“It’s definitely in the back of my mind,” Hayward said. “I’m definitely pushing to get back as fast as I can, while making sure that I still have a lot of good years of basketball in me. And coming back early and hurting something else is not part of that plan. So I’m making sure that if I come back, I’m one-thousand percent confident in myself and my leg. I hope more than anything I can play this season. That would be awesome. But that’s not something I’m stressing about. I’m stressing about what I can do today to help myself get better.”

While it still is unlikey for him to return this season, it is great to have such a positive outlook after one of the most horrific injuries in recent history.