Boston Celtics: 5 players who need to step up without Gordon Hayward

After Gordon Hayward‘s gruesome injury, the Boston Celtics will have to step up as a team in order to fill the void.

About halfway through the first quarter in the season opener, Gordon Hayward’s first season in a Boston Celtics uniform took a turn for the worst.

Hayward was going up for an alley-oop, as players often do, but he landed very awkwardly on his left ankle. The players, the coaching staff, the arena and Gordon Hayward himself went into a brief moment of shock when everyone realized that his foot was pointed in the wrong direction. H

e was later diagnosed with a dislocated left ankle and a fractured tibia. It was so gruesome that I’d prefer not to display it in this article, but if you haven’t seen it and wish to do so, you can view it here.

Although we sometimes treat players like robots — trading them and cutting them at a moment’s notice and then forgetting about them when they are no longer useful on the court — we have to remember that these guys are human too. It was an unfortunate reminder of how fragile an athlete’s career is, and how fragile our bodies are as well.

There are still 81 games left to play, however, and the Celtics will have to try to move on like everyone else. They can’t fill Hayward’s spot with one individual, so the team will have to fill the void through a collective effort.

Here are five players on the Boston Celtics that have to step up without Gordon Hayward, operating under the assumption that he will be missing significant time if not the entire 2017-18 NBA season.