Hayward: is he a wing or a swing?

[PAOBoston]

Does it really matter what he is classified as? He's gonna play. Tatum and Brown are also gonna play and they'll guard whoever based on the matchup. Most teams go small now anyways so it's only probably a handful of teams where they might have to possibly move things around.

[CelticSooner]

My goodness this team is going to be nasty. Gets you all giddy waiting for the season. 

[coffee425]

I think we may be talking about different things here. To me, wings and swings are not defined by the versatility of their positions on the floor (2,3,4, etc).
This is all my personal basketball definition, but I think it makes sense.

A wing is a player that is used to stretch the floor by consistently maintaining floor spacing by either cutting, moving around screens, spotting up outside of 3, and attacking closeouts. Its job is to maximize the spacing of the court. The obvious way is to shoot from distance, but can also help spacing by maximizing cutting and screen space within the 3pt line as well.

A swing is a player that is concerned more with helping the team's ball-movement by "swing-ing" the ball to advantageous areas of the court. This includes a significant amount of ball-handling and playmaking to get the ball in good spots, as well as the secondary function of being available for the spot-up 3, since Brad loves spacing. Swings noawadays will also usually have isolation sets called for them, to attack the defense for a shot or a kickout; as well as coming off of a handoff for a pick'n'roll set.

All of this being said, I think that Gordon probably have a 60(swing)-40(wing) role split. He is the only other starter that can run pick'n'roll, and is assumed to be one of the smarter players on the team. As great of a shooter as Hayward is, I doubt that Brad will give significant opportunities for Jaylen and Tatum to run the offense with Kyrie on the bench. This will probably be more for Smart, Hayward, and Horford to be the primary decision makers.

Finally, these positions are defined strictly on offense. Defensively, swings and wings are identical, since they are being asked to guard on the perimeter anyway. Defensively, there's only Bigs, Ballstoppers, and Wings to me.

[Donoghus]

Can't he really play any of the 2-4 on the floor depending on the lineup at the time?

[Csfan1984]

I feel he can play 1-4 depending on the matchups. NBA is an evolving league. A lot of swingmen out there now.

[saltlover]

I think we may be talking about different things here. To me, wings and swings are not defined by the versatility of their positions on the floor (2,3,4, etc).
This is all my personal basketball definition, but I think it makes sense.

A wing is a player that is used to stretch the floor by consistently maintaining floor spacing by either cutting, moving around screens, spotting up outside of 3, and attacking closeouts. Its job is to maximize the spacing of the court. The obvious way is to shoot from distance, but can also help spacing by maximizing cutting and screen space within the 3pt line as well.

A swing is a player that is concerned more with helping the team's ball-movement by "swing-ing" the ball to advantageous areas of the court. This includes a significant amount of ball-handling and playmaking to get the ball in good spots, as well as the secondary function of being available for the spot-up 3, since Brad loves spacing. Swings noawadays will also usually have isolation sets called for them, to attack the defense for a shot or a kickout; as well as coming off of a handoff for a pick'n'roll set.

All of this being said, I think that Gordon probably have a 60(swing)-40(wing) role split. He is the only other starter that can run pick'n'roll, and is assumed to be one of the smarter players on the team. As great of a shooter as Hayward is, I doubt that Brad will give significant opportunities for Jaylen and Tatum to run the offense with Kyrie on the bench. This will probably be more for Smart, Hayward, and Horford to be the primary decision makers.

Finally, these positions are defined strictly on offense. Defensively, swings and wings are identical, since they are being asked to guard on the perimeter anyway. Defensively, there's only Bigs, Ballstoppers, and Wings to me.

Your definition of swings is not that of Stevens.  Brad defines a swing a forward who is capable of switching onto bigs — the 3/4 hybrids that are in vogue right now.  Presumably that is what everyone else is referring to as well — essentially, is Hayward a swing (a SG/SF player who can at times switch onto ballhandlers defensively, and plays a perimeter oriented offensive game, or a swing, who is able to switch onto bigs defensively and also create offense on the interior at times.  A few of us think he is capable of both, and so is a swing and a wing (just as someone could argue that Smart is both a ballhandler and a wing).

[KG Living Legend]

Can't he really play any of the 2-4 on the floor depending on the lineup at the time?

 Yes. God please bring us Basketball again.

[GreenShooter]

Gordon Hayward Regular Season Career:
Season    Age    Tm    Pos    G    MP    PG%  SG%  SF%    PF%  C%
2010-11   20   UTA   SF   72   1218            13%   71%   17%   
2011-12   21   UTA   SF   66   2015              5%   92%    3%   
2012-13   22   UTA   SF   72   2104             27%  73%      
2013-14   23   UTA   SF   77   2800              2%   75%   24%   
2014-15   24   UTA   SF   76   2618                      95%     5%   
2015-16   25   UTA   SF   80   2893             12%   86%    3%   
2016-17   26   UTA   SF   73   2516                       71%   30%   


Gordon Hayward Playoff Career:
Season     Age    Tm    Pos     G      MP     PG%  SG%  SF%   PF%   C%
2011-12   21   UTA     SF      4      123              57%  43%      
2016-17   26   UTA    SF     11      411                       38%  62%   

He seems to have solid experience playing any of the SG/SF/PF positions.
(Source: Basketball-reference)

This is the era of position-less basketball when you have versatile players like this on your team. He can guard 2-4 and it's great to have several such players with all the switching on D that the C's do.

Also, he must be considered injury-prone, just like some of you that consider Anthony Davis as such, as he's never played more than 80 games and missed all of last season.
I'm surprised no one had yet posted this kind of nonsense.

Edit: I'm not going to include last season but since they came into the league GH averages 73 games per season (64.5 if you include last years lost season) while AD averages 68.3. That's not injury prone.

[Big333223]

Yes.

This is correct.

I concur.

[Jvalin]

There are 1) ball handlers, 2) wings, and 3) bigs. Brad Stevens has said this himself. Hayward is a wing. What is all this talk about "swings"?

Here is a CBS quote from June 2015.

Obviously everyone starts with 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s when they look at a basketball team. I look at ball-handlers, wings, swings and bigs. I only have four categories. The more guys that can play the more positions, the better. Right now I think if you look at the roster, I think we have three of the four categories with a lot of depth. And I think that swing area where you can go 3-4 and play that way, that's the area we're going to have to adress as we move into the next few weeks and look at our team.

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2015/06/brad_stevens_boston_celtics_lu.html

[Vermont Green]

I am seeing different stats on where Hayward has played historically.  I referred to 82games which takes data directly from 5-man units.  They say this about Hayward's experience at PF:

2016-17   0%
2015-16   1%
2014-15   0%

I don't understand why people want to play Hayward out of position as a big (PF).  I don't see anything in his game that would make me think the best way to play him is as a big.  For me, the same goes for Tatum.

I know we have a roster imbalance with Brown, Tatum, and Hayward all being starting level wings but that should not make us play them out of position other than for short periods of time.  One of these guys is probably going to need to come off the bench.  I don't know how we are going to manage the end of the game.

[Vermont Green]

There are 1) ball handlers, 2) wings, and 3) bigs. Brad Stevens has said this himself. Hayward is a wing. What is all this talk about "swings"?

Here is a CBS quote from June 2015.

Obviously everyone starts with 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s when they look at a basketball team. I look at ball-handlers, wings, swings and bigs. I only have four categories. The more guys that can play the more positions, the better. Right now I think if you look at the roster, I think we have three of the four categories with a lot of depth. And I think that swing area where you can go 3-4 and play that way, that's the area we're going to have to address as we move into the next few weeks and look at our team.

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2015/06/brad_stevens_boston_celtics_lu.html

Yes, this is how I see it.  Marcus Morris is a prototypical swing.  Ojeleye is a swing.  These guys tend to play the most as a big but can move out and play as a wing (maybe they should call them bings "big-wings").  Tatum might be a swing at some point but he is so good as a wing, that I think it would be a waste to play him as big at all.  For example, would it be smart to play Durant as a swing instead of a wing?

I think these guys positions are pretty clear but the more relevant question is what combination of these do you want to have on the floor.  I believe that for much of the game, you want two bigs on the floor with 2 wings and a ball handler.  I guess you could go with a big+swing+wing+wing+BH in many cases as well.  I don't want to go much smaller than that.

[nickagneta]

There are 1) ball handlers, 2) wings, and 3) bigs. Brad Stevens has said this himself. Hayward is a wing. What is all this talk about "swings"?

And really, who cares about any of Stevens' monikers either?

The only thing that matters is whether at least one of Hayward or Tatum is capable of defending the opposition's 2nd biggest/tallest player.

Yeah it don't matter the ball-handlers/wings/bigs. They'll still start and close with 5 players.

Who is the closing 5 is more important though:

Kyrie/Smart/Tatum/Hayward/Horford
Kyrie/Hayward/Tatum/Theis/Horford

Get guys who could also box-out and rebound.

Brown came in 15th in voting for the All-Defense team and shot 39% from three yet you think he won't be on the floor to end games? I don't see that.

[coffee425]

I think we may be talking about different things here. To me, wings and swings are not defined by the versatility of their positions on the floor (2,3,4, etc).
This is all my personal basketball definition, but I think it makes sense.

A wing is a player that is used to stretch the floor by consistently maintaining floor spacing by either cutting, moving around screens, spotting up outside of 3, and attacking closeouts. Its job is to maximize the spacing of the court. The obvious way is to shoot from distance, but can also help spacing by maximizing cutting and screen space within the 3pt line as well.

A swing is a player that is concerned more with helping the team's ball-movement by "swing-ing" the ball to advantageous areas of the court. This includes a significant amount of ball-handling and playmaking to get the ball in good spots, as well as the secondary function of being available for the spot-up 3, since Brad loves spacing. Swings noawadays will also usually have isolation sets called for them, to attack the defense for a shot or a kickout; as well as coming off of a handoff for a pick'n'roll set.

All of this being said, I think that Gordon probably have a 60(swing)-40(wing) role split. He is the only other starter that can run pick'n'roll, and is assumed to be one of the smarter players on the team. As great of a shooter as Hayward is, I doubt that Brad will give significant opportunities for Jaylen and Tatum to run the offense with Kyrie on the bench. This will probably be more for Smart, Hayward, and Horford to be the primary decision makers.

Finally, these positions are defined strictly on offense. Defensively, swings and wings are identical, since they are being asked to guard on the perimeter anyway. Defensively, there's only Bigs, Ballstoppers, and Wings to me.

Your definition of swings is not that of Stevens.  Brad defines a swing a forward who is capable of switching onto bigs — the 3/4 hybrids that are in vogue right now.  Presumably that is what everyone else is referring to as well — essentially, is Hayward a swing (a SG/SF player who can at times switch onto ballhandlers defensively, and plays a perimeter oriented offensive game, or a swing, who is able to switch onto bigs defensively and also create offense on the interior at times.  A few of us think he is capable of both, and so is a swing and a wing (just as someone could argue that Smart is both a ballhandler and a wing).

Did he quote this somwhere?

[mmmmm]

I am seeing different stats on where Hayward has played historically.  I referred to 82games which takes data directly from 5-man units.  They say this about Hayward's experience at PF:

2016-17   0%
2015-16   1%
2014-15   0%

I don't understand why people want to play Hayward out of position as a big (PF).  I don't see anything in his game that would make me think the best way to play him is as a big.  For me, the same goes for Tatum.

I know we have a roster imbalance with Brown, Tatum, and Hayward all being starting level wings but that should not make us play them out of position other than for short periods of time.  One of these guys is probably going to need to come off the bench.  I don't know how we are going to manage the end of the game.

I concur.  I think the basketball-reference.com numbers are just plain wrong.  It's possible they are based on substitution events, which are not a good way to track this.  Based on 82games.com and nbawowy.com data, (and simple eye test from watching him play) I think it's pretty obvious that he has primarily been used as a ball-handling 2-3 wing (i.e., 'SG' and 'SF').  Not a PF.

I grabbed his top-25 most-used 5-man lineups from 2016-17 below.   This accounts for 1732 of Gordon's 2880 minutes that year.  The rest of the lineups are all tiny samples and don't really seem to disagree with these 25 as a representative sample.

The numerical assignments are assigned by nbawowy.com using their positional tracking method.   Ignore that.  Instead, just plain _look_ at who is on the floor with him in these lineups.  There isn't a single one of these lineups where I look at it and say, "Yeah, that's where Gordon was _obviously_ playing PF."

The only lineup among the set where a decent case could be made for him being the PF is the Mack+Hood+Johnson+Hayward+Gobert lineup.   And even there, if you'd watched Johnson play of late, he's more of the 'big wing'/PF type than Gordon.  He's much heavier (easily over 240 lb) and a stronger matchup on both ends down low.

In all other lineups there are clearly at least 2 players who are more obvious 'bigs' than Hayward.

Now, that doesn't mean that Brad won't turn around and deploy Gordon as a 4 in Boston.   But there isn't really much history of him playing that role for other than spot minutes since he came into the NBA.


1             2               3              4                5             POSS   MIN
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Derrick Favors  Rudy Gobert    278   148.4
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Joe Johnson     Joe Ingles      Rudy Gobert    272   144.2
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Derrick Favors  Rudy Gobert    265   140.3
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    223   121.4
Dant√© Exum   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    215   117.1
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    212   116.5
Dant√© Exum   Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    175    89.8
Shelvin Mack  Joe Johnson     Joe Ingles      Gordon Hayward  Rudy Gobert    170    94.0
Shelvin Mack  Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    167    89.2
Shelvin Mack  Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Derrick Favors  Rudy Gobert    141    77.8
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Joe Johnson     Rudy Gobert    108    58.1
Shelvin Mack  Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert    103    55.5
Shelvin Mack  Joe Ingles      Gordon Hayward  Trey Lyles      Rudy Gobert    100    55.4
Shelvin Mack  Rodney Hood     Joe Johnson     Gordon Hayward  Rudy Gobert     95    46.4
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Derrick Favors  Boris Diaw      90    48.0
Dant√© Exum   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Trey Lyles      Rudy Gobert     79    41.5
Dant√© Exum   Gordon Hayward  Joe Johnson     Joe Ingles      Rudy Gobert     77    42.4
George Hill   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Trey Lyles      Rudy Gobert     68    34.9
Dant√© Exum   Joe Ingles      Gordon Hayward  Derrick Favors  Rudy Gobert     64    34.3
Dant√© Exum   Gordon Hayward  Rodney Hood     Joe Johnson     Rudy Gobert     60    31.8
Dant√© Exum   Alec Burks      Gordon Hayward  Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert     58    26.5
Raul Neto     Gordon Hayward  Joe Ingles      Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert     58    29.6
Shelvin Mack  Joe Johnson     Gordon Hayward  Trey Lyles      Rudy Gobert     57    30.1
Shelvin Mack  Rodney Hood     Gordon Hayward  Trey Lyles      Rudy Gobert     56    31.8
Alec Burks    George Hill     Gordon Hayward  Boris Diaw      Rudy Gobert     52    27.6