Gordon Hayward made his first public comments since undergoing surgery to repair his fractured left ankle on Wednesday night and confirmed that he expects to miss the remainder of the year.
The All-Star guard made the comments in a blog post on his website titled "In an Instant" that actually forced his website to crash initially due to the heavy web traffic.
Hayward detailed the injury and the recovery process so far and credited the Celtics for guiding him through it.
"Immediately, I knew something was off, but when I landed, it wasn't a huge amount of pain," he said. "I rolled over and saw my foot, and it was pointed in completely the wrong direction. My first thought was, 'Oh. This isn't good. There's something very wrong here.'"
"The Celtics organization has been just over the top in every aspect,"Hayward added later in the post. "They know I will not be back on the court at all this season, but they have been making sure I have every resource I need, and are making me feel like I am a part of the team."
A few other highlights of note
- Brad Stevens was one of the people that help carried Hayward onto the team plane up two flights of stairs.
- Hayward received emails from the likes of former President Obama in the wake of the injury.
- The injury looked a lot worse than it could have been. "The initial diagnosis from the doctors was pretty good. 'If you were going to have a horrific leg injury, this would be the one to have,' they basically told me," wrote Hayward. "As bad as it looked, they said I'd have a full recovery if the surgery went well."