Bill Simmons invited Mark Titus, an expert on college hoops, on his latest podcast and besides the praise for Markelle Fultz, they mentioned a story about Gordon Hayward and Brad Stevens going back to their Butler days.
It starts at the 31:00 mark : https://soundcloud.com/the-bill-simmons-podcast/nba-draft-lottery-reaction-with-mark-titus-ep-214
Basically : when he was playing at Butler, Hayward's parents had Purdue season tickets and went to all their games. Purdue had offered him a scholarship, he could have played for them (when they were great) but he chose Butler because Brad Stevens was the first to believe in him and kind of recruited him by offering a scholarship when he was not already known as a good player and didn't have his growth spurt. He was loyal to Stevens.
Titus doesn't want to predict if Hayward will want to reunite with Stevens this summer but I thought it was worth sharing this anecdote.
TP for that info! Thanks for sharing. Definitely an interesting story/anecdote.
I'm starting to lay off the Hayward train just a bit now though. We'd practically gut this team UNLESS Hayward is willing to take a small pay cut (like 2-3 M/less a year).
Not really. He would have to take approximately a $400k/yr pay cut if we trade AB and keep KO. This assumes Zeller, JJ, Amir, Mickey, Young, and Jackson are gone. We could bring in Zizic, but have to wait on Yabusele.
If you are a huge Amir, JJ, or Zeller fan, I think we could grab any one of them with the room exception.
Hayward isn't an upper-tier superstar, but I would gladly take him without having to gut our team/BKN picks for Butler/George. I sure hope that Stevens connection is legit.