Written by Andrew Sharp at SI.com
“Oh my goodness, Hayward came down so hard,” Kevin Harlan was saying halfway through the first quarter of the TNT broadcast. And then a second later: “Hayward broke his leg. Hayward has broken his leg. Hayward has broken his leg.” Then more silence. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And that is how quickly a season can change.” Then Reggie Miller: “This is unbelievable. I mean…” For the next 90 seconds, the broadcast team went silent. All you could hear were murmurs from the crowd while the camera panned across stunned fans and players.
“It’s hard to describe the feeling in the building,” Harlan said near the end of the game.
Watching at home, there was the initial confusion, and then horror that set in watching everyone in the arena recoil at once. And then, obviously, as he grimaced and nodded toward LeBron James and the Cavs while being carried off the floor, everyone felt awful for Hayward.
But the whole time, there was also a kind of disbelief that any of this was really happening. Hayward’s injury would’ve been awful in any game, but five minutes into the first game of the NBA season, it seemed like some kind of alternate timeline nightmare for basketball fans. This was Paul George’s Team USA injury, with the entire sport watching, in a game that we’d all planned our week around. The injury was bad enough that announcers could diagnose him seconds afterward from 50 feet away. Various players ran off the Cavs bench. The Celtics played the next hour looking dazed and lifeless.
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