FORM<\/a>, a teaching tool that helps players learn proper shooting technique.<\/p>\n\u201cThe biggest thing I\u2019ve been working on lately is FORM,\u201d said Hayward, who retired in 2024. \u201cIt\u2019s starting to pick up a lot of steam on social media and stuff. I really believe it\u2019s a great tool to help kids learn the foundation of shooting, proper shooting fundamentals. Stuff like keeping your elbow aligned, your hand underneath and in the center of the ball. It\u2019s basketball season now, so it\u2019s really taking off.\u201d<\/p>\n
What else has Hayward, who had a prolific college career at Butler before being drafted ninth in 2010 by the Utah Jazz, been up to?<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: The following conversation has been condensed and edited.<\/p>\n
NBA.com: How were your holidays?<\/p>\n
Gordon Hayward: We\u2019ve got five kids all under the age of 10. The goal is always for everyone to be happy with their presents. No crying on Christmas.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s funny. Did you watch the NBA Cup Championship?<\/p>\n
I did not get the chance to. I saw the box score. I know New York won. I saw Victor Wembanyama came off the bench, but he played. The Knicks did a good job. They were physical with him.<\/p>\n
I like the NBA Cup.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s actually pretty cool. I think my last season in the NBA was the first or second year of it and there was some hesitance from the players to embrace it.<\/p>\n
But, you know, I think that it\u2019s a pretty cool concept. The chance to go to Vegas in the middle of the season and compete to win a trophy is a cool thing. I love that. It doesn\u2019t really change your schedule a whole lot, either. So it\u2019s not like you\u2019re being asked to travel all over the place and do different events throughout the season. It\u2019s kind of just a part of the regular season. I actually think it\u2019s good.<\/p>\n
Plus, that\u2019s a lot of money for the winning team.<\/p>\n
That helps, too. No doubt.<\/p>\n
How closely do you pay attention to the NBA right now, now that you\u2019re retired?<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ve been pretty regular on just keeping up on some of the news that\u2019s going on. I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve sat down and watched a bunch of games. I check box scores. I look at highlights, different things like that. As I mentioned to you, we have a lot going on with five kids, and I\u2019m in the middle of coaching my fifth-grade daughter\u2019s team. But yeah, I keep up with what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
All right, so what are your thoughts? Who\u2019s the best team in the West?<\/p>\n
The Thunder are the best team in the league by a mile, right? They blow teams out \u2026 other than the Spurs. Everyone\u2019s trying to figure out what they can do to stop them. [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] has figured out the league right now and figured out the rules, and he seems almost unstoppable. It seems similar to the season that James Harden had when he was with the Rockets. I don\u2019t know if you remember, the Jazz played him in the playoffs, and they were guarding him from behind to try to, like, figure out what to do. Because it was like, with the way they were calling fouls and how he was getting to the free-throw line and stuff, he was basically unguardable. And the whole league was like, \u2018How do we guard this guy? How do we defend?\u2019 And I think it\u2019s something similar with SGA, where it\u2019s like, he\u2019s putting up these numbers every single night. He\u2019s efficient, too.<\/p>\n
SGA makes the game look so easy.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t even play in the fourth quarter a lot of times because they are blowing the other team out. He\u2019s scoring like 32 points in 30 minutes, you know. I remember when the Warriors had that 73 and 9 team, it was like Steph [Curry] was doing similar things, where it\u2019s like they\u2019re blowing teams out, and Steph is still averaging almost 30 or whatever. It was kind of crazy.<\/p>\n
Do you have SGA as your MVP? I mean, personally, I still like Joker, but \u2026<\/p>\n
I think that [Nikola] Joki\u0107 is the best player in the world. I think everything that he brings to the table is a little more than Shai. I think Shai is the best scorer in the game.<\/p>\n
I have a daughter who plays basketball and I spend a lot of time working on her shot. Do you think you should drop the ball before you shoot it? A lot of coaches believe in catching it and shooting it from your chest to get it off faster.<\/p>\n
Steph drops the ball, you know, and he gets it off from anywhere. I\u2019m trying to figure that out, because one of the things that makes Joker unguardable is how he shoots it from behind his head. He\u2019s incredible.<\/p>\n
Thoughts on the East?<\/p>\n
I think the East is like, so wide open. It seems like that could change week to week. I think, you know, New York winning the Cup is, in my eyes, a little bit of foreshadowing. I think that they\u2019re a team that\u2019s built for the playoffs. They\u2019ve got big wings who can defend multiple positions, they\u2019re older, and they have guys that you can give the ball to and they can get a bucket.<\/p>\n
My surprise team in the East is the Pistons. And I think you got to give Cade [Cunningham] a lot of credit for what he\u2019s doing with them. And the Duncan Robinson pickup was huge. He gives them some shooting and some room for Cade to operate. They\u2019re another team that\u2019s super dangerous as well in the East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Check out the best moments from Gordon Hayward’s NBA career. During his 14-year NBA career with the Utah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,210911,85],"class_list":["post-394906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-gordon-hayward-qa","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}