The question was simple, but Gordon Hayward’s answer was not.



“You having fun?” I asked the Boston Celtics small forward as we talked outside the visitor’s locker room at Oracle Arena back on March 5, when his 30-point outburst had this Jekyll-and-Hyde bunch to a message-sending win over the back-to-back champion Golden State Warriors.



“Tonight was fun,” he said with a smile as he headed for the team bus.



Tomorrow, the inference went, could be another story entirely.



For anyone who has paid attention to Hayward’s comeback from his brutal ankle break two Octobers ago, or watched the Celtics’ mysterious struggles these past few months as they re-incorporated their proven stars with the young talents on the rise, his cautious optimism made perfect sense. As if it wasn’t tough enough to go from being a starter your whole career to being a reserve behind 21-year-old Jayson Tatum, Hayward was now...