On social media there was a collective…
OMG!!!
When we saw Hayward’s foot pointing in a different direction. Here is how the Cavs reacted via Bleacher Report.
Jeff Green, one of the players on the Cavaliers bench—which had a front-row seat for the sequence of events—was one of the most animated, completely leaving his seat to head toward the team’s tunnel.
“I was hoping I didn’t see what I saw,” Green told Bleacher Report. “It was gruesome. I didn’t expect to see that when he rolled and turned our way. I thought it was his lower back or his ass or something. You never wish injury on anyone, especially such a good player like that.”
A lot,” LeBron James said. “I’ve seen a couple injuries like that in my lifetime. Paul George, when [a similar injury] happened to Paul. I was watching the game with Shaun Livingston when he was with the Clippers. And I was watching NCAA basketball with Kevin Ware when he was at Louisville.
“Those are injuries that you never see coming, that you never want to happen no matter who it is, no matter how much competitive nature you have. It’s very unfortunate.”
Cavaliers power forward Kevin Love, who was seated next to Green during the play, went from resting his elbows on his knees to grabbing his own leg as if it were in phantom pain, turning 180 degrees toward the Quicken Loans Arena crowd.
“It’s sad,” Love added. “You see someone go down like that. It was ugly. It wasn’t pretty. You can just hope for the best as he recovers.”
“This is a competitive game,” Wade said. “We all compete. But it’s a brotherhood at the end of the day, and no one wants to see that at all.”
Hopefully, the breaks are clean and he comes back stronger than ever like Paul George. The mental trauma might be more painful than the physical.
Flip the page for the video, but a reminder it is very gruesome…