Cavs give him the max it will be like orlando paying rashard lewis all that money. but, hayward is still a good player. When you are a small market you have to overpay.
The problem most people have with paying Gordon Hayward isn't that he's not worth the max -- it's that he's not even
remotely close to being worth the max. I'm fine with overpaying by a notch (
as we already did with Kyrie), but a slightly above average talent like Hayward is better off acquired for a handful of seasons via trade than by vastly overpaying for him to play here a little longer. There are far more above average players than elite players and there's a valid reason why they're not all being paid max contracts. A max contract player should be able to take over in a pinch when the team's lead dog goes down and also help lead his team to wins in the playoffs. I don't see Hayward doing much of either.
His shooting % goes down the more he shoots, which has happened to him every season. His sweet spot seems to be ~10 FGA per game, which is good for ~13-14 ppg. He's a guy who plays well off the bench and can start in a roleplayer capacity. We're not talking Bosh or Wade here. Utah gave him the reigns last season and while his shots went up, his TS% wilted. What do you think is going to happen in the playoffs when teams gameplan for him? We already have a sample of his playoffs vanishing act and it's not pretty.
The one good aspect about Hayward is that he's the type of player who would fit nicely as a roleplayer in Blatt's pass oriented offense. He has the height and passing skills Blatt covets. Blatt might even get more out of Hayward than Utah did, but you don't go around handing out max contracts to roleplayers based on wild assumptions.
If the Cavs feel that they need a certain type of player, then try to package players/picks from the list of players they deem expendable. That's how Ferry landed Mo Williams. He gave up Joe Smith and Amon Ones -- a quality move. Throwing max contracts at roleplayers isn't quality -- it's a cop out. Especially in the Cleveland market, where a GM needs to be much more clever than that.
