This is beautiful.
I'll be honest, even though Hayward was much better than I thought he was going to be, I never fell in love with him. I always thought some measure of his popularity had to do with how he looked. The Madame and I only referred to him as "Elder Hayward." I barely feel like he was important to the franchise's history. He was our best player during our most sustained period of mediocrity in my lifetime.
Last summer I was honestly perplexed that the whole NBA world was in stasis waiting for a guy who has a 0% chance of EVER making Team USA.
I'm already way higher on Mitchell than I ever got on Hayward over seven years.