Rarely have the biggest free agents wanted to sign with the Charlotte Hornets. However, Gordon Hayward did in 2020 via sign-and-trade. As many are aware, that move didn't work well for the former star and the team. What only a few might know is that the deal he signed with the Hornets happens to be the third-biggest free agency deal for someone changing teams in the past six years.
Zach Kram of ESPN recently compiled a list of every NBA team's most notable roster mistake since 2020. The sports scribe identified the Hayward acquisition as the entry for the Hornets, pointing out that only two players signed for more money while transferring to a new home, namely Paul George when he joined the Philadelphia 76ers and Fred VanVleet when he joined the Houston Rockets.
However, Kram categorized Charlotte's blunder as a small-scale problem. To be fair to Hayward, he was just one of the supposed slip-ups the organization had committed from 2020 until this year. For instance, drafting James Bouknight, who is likely not welcome in Buzz City anymore, in 2021 and acquiring Mason Plumlee twice have also been criticized. However, the amount of money the Hornets committed to the then-injury-prone swingman was too substantial to ignore.
Gordon Hayward wasn't that much of a problem for Hornets
As it turned out, Hayward never played in more than 50 games in each of the three-and-a-half campaigns he wore the purple and teal. He was productive, though, when healthy, although his numbers gradually went down over the years.
Maybe if the Hornets hadn't owed the 2017 All-Star a total of $120 million in four years, bringing him in wouldn't have been too much of an issue. Fortunately, the franchise was able to salvage some value out of the gaffe when it found a taker for Hayward at the trade deadline of the 2023-24 season. The Oklahoma City Thunder may have thought he was the missing piece of their championship-pursuit puzzle, trading for him in exchange for Tre Mann, Vasilije Micic, Davis Bertans, a couple of second-round picks, and cash consideration.
It was an impressive fleece job by Charlotte, considering that it landed a baller in Mann, stocked up its cupboard of draft assets at the time, and eventually turned Micic into more assets — all while Hayward failed to find his footing in Oklahoma City and retired months after the trade. There is no last laugh for the Hornets, though, because the Thunder have just secured the title this year.
Still, in some ways, the "mistake" Charlotte made in 2020 may have worked out for the best. Perhaps we can say so definitively if Mann develops into the weapon off the bench he showed us that he can be several months ago, before he had to sit out most of the 2024-25 season due to a back injury.