They shouldn't let it get to that point. And the crippling move would be to pay him the max. He's a 3rd or 4th best option on a championship contender and we have NONE of our core locked up long term. Re-signing him would probably cost us multiple other pieces of our core and/or kill all financial/roster flexibility that could be used in obtaining the player(s) that can put the bulk of this core into championship contention. Re-signing Hayward is not a championship winning path. Which is why I've been advocating a Hayward trade all off-season. DL has done a great job in the asset acquisition portion of this rebuild. The foundation of certain key pieces going forward is there. Now the key is to keep flexibility and as many of the assets as possible until the opportunity arises to get that star player to carry those key pieces to a championship level. Moving Hayward for good assets allows you to do that. Let's say they move him to Boston for example which I think would be a perfect trading partner because they have great assets and are dying for a player like Hayward right now. The best piece they could get back would be Brooklyn's 2017 1st rounder, likely a top 3-5 pick (could easily be #1), in a loaded draft.
Let's look at our future with that deal...
2017- Rudy is a free agent. They could easily sign him to the max, no issues.
The player selected with Brooklyn's pick would be under contract until 2021.
Decisions will need to be made on George Hill, Shelvin Mack, Boris Diaw, Joe Ingles and Tibor Pleiss. They will have room to keep any if they want too.
2018- Favors, Exum, Hood and Joe Johnson will all be free agents. If we kept Hayward, we would be in cap hell at this point. Weighing our options between likely going over the luxury tax or maybe letting one or two of these guys walk. But with that money available we have options. It's possible Favors, Hood and Exum could all be kept. Especially if we have found our star by then (whether that star be someone on the team already who broke out, the Brooklyn pick, or someone acquired via free agency or trade)
2019- Lyles and Burks will be free agents. It becomes hard to speculate what the team will look like at this point. But this path is much stronger than the one re-signing Hayward would be. It opens the door to keeping the bulk of our core. Gobert, Hood, Exum and Favors and/or Lyles could all be kept. Assets are maintained. Roster flexibility is kept. Financial flexibility is kept. We stay a solid team. And the organization buys itself precious time (2-3 years) to see if any of these young guys Hood, Exum, Lyles, Gobert or maybe the Brooklyn pick breaks out and carries us to another level. Time is everything. THIS is a possible championship path.