Gordon Hayward Speaks on his Recovery From COVID-19
There was plenty of optimism on Gordon Hayward’s front coming into the 2021-22 NBA season as he entered Hornets training camp coming off of his first fully healthy offseason since 2016. Unfortunately, due to things out of his control, he did not get the training camp and preseason he envisioned. The veteran forward entered the NBA’s health and safety protocols on October 6th, which resulted in him missing Charlotte’s final three preseason games.
On Monday afternoon, Gordon Hayward addressed the Hornets media for the first time since recovering from COVID-19. Hayward tried to look at the glass half full, saying he’s glad he got COVID now rather than at a more crucial point during the season.
“I try to look at it as glad that it happened in the preseason and not the regular season,” Hayward explained. “Now I’m vaccinated and coming off of COVID so I think I should be good to go. You never know with this thing, with the variants and everything changing so rapidly you just don’t know. I’m glad to catch it when I did and I should be good for the whole season, I hope.”
Hayward will indeed be active Wednesday but he said that he won’t necessarily be on a minute’s restriction going into the season opener against Indiana. He and head coach James Borrego will play the situation by ear and just see how he feels Wednesday as the game progresses. His conditioning isn’t back to 100 percent quite yet but Hayward has been taking full advantage of every second leading up to Wednesday's opener.
“The last few days have been really good as far as getting some cardio back. I think that’s something I’m just going to have to work through the first couple of weeks… I’m actually glad that we had that time that we did after that last preseason game so I could get a chance to get in some live-action and practice because I was down for the count for a little while.”
The Hornets star forward obviously does not take COVID lightly and understands the severity of the virus. Even as a professional athlete, his bout with the new variant was far from enjoyable.
“It was not fun. I had the whole gambit of symptoms… General body aches and headaches were pretty brutal, fever, the chills. The isolation was tough too… Luckily I didn’t lose my taste or smell, so that was good because I feel like I did not lose too much weight but I should gain that back here pretty soon.”
Despite the unorthodox start to the season amid his bout with COVID, Hayward remains assured that his team can take their game to the next level and continue on this upward trajectory.
“We certainly want to take this thing one game at a time and certainly want to be better than we were last year. Last year we showed moments and had flashes. I think this team is very versatile. We got a lot of weapons. A lot of guys that can make plays.”
The Hornets did indeed show flashes last season as they stood atop the Eastern Conference as the 4th seed prior to LaMelo Ball’s wrist injury and Gordon Hayward’s season-ending foot injury. As Hayward said Monday, Charlotte needs to be playing their best basketball at the end of the season and the most crucial component of that is all of their core players remaining healthy and available. If Charlotte can do that and continue buying into head coach James Borrego’s game plan, Hayward and the Hornets can surely make a playoff push in the Eastern Conference.
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