Another July 4th, another explosive free agency move that resulted in Twitter meltdowns, Reddit upvote parties, and jersey burnings. For the third straight year, a marquee player has left the small-market team that drafted him for a title contender in a larger city.

Such decisions have always resulted in joy, anger, chaos, and heartbreak. Whether it’s Reggie White’s move from Philly to Green Bay in 1993 or LeBron’s Decision in 2010, fans have latched onto players they love and been enraged at their departures for decades. It’s a natural reaction.

Utah is no different, and this time it was their ninth overall pick from 2010 that left them: Gordon Hayward. Jazz fans are a loyal bunch, ranking sixth overall in 2017 for fan attendance, and they’ve been in the top ten of that metric six out of the seven years Hayward had been there. The fans there are smart. They know what Hayward meant to the development of Jazz basketball and how difficult it will be to replace him.

For the Jazz, Hayward’s departure puts a significant dent into their exciting young core. But for all the hatred that the Jazz and anti-Celtics community is spewing towards Hayward now, his move should be treated with far less vitriol than most of the splashy moves that preceded his own.

For starters, the Jazz declined to extend him as his rookie contract was expiring.

People have doubted Hayward his entire life, and that includes the Utah Jazz front office. Athletes use criticism and disrespect as fuel, and when the Jazz brass failed to meet his demands, one can only imagine Hayward’s displeasure. In all fairness, Hayward only sank a bizarre 30.4% of his threes in the 2013 season, and the Jazz brass made it clear that they valued teammate Derrick Favors over Hayward at the time.

With Favors on the Jazz’s books with a $49-million/4-year deal, Hayward was reportedly asking for something between Favor’s contract and Paul George’s four-year, $80 million contract. With Alec Burks’ extension deadline looming, the Jazz gambled, hoping that Hayward might get low-balled by the league. The following summer, the Charlotte Hornets signed Hayward to a four year, $63 million offer sheet that the Jazz quickly met.

In the end, no one knows the exact dollar amount that Hayward wanted from Utah in October of 2013. It’s possible that he hadn’t even requested a $63 million paycheck, but at any rate, he likely felt a little spurned by the Jazz.

Had they offered him a little less money than Paul George, it would have been a powerful sign of good faith towards the young star. Had they signed him to the five-year max, we wouldn’t even be discussing this because he’d still be a member of the Jazz for two more seasons without a player option.

Now Hayward has blossomed into an All-Star and a borderline All-NBA player, and the Jazz are more than willing to throw max dollars at him. This time however, he was unrestricted, and when he decided to join the Celtics, the Jazz could do nothing but watch. They played a cheap game in 2014, and three years later, they lost their star player because of it.

The PR fiasco concerning the early afternoon leak should not be accredited to Hayward.

For the record, the way that Hayward’s decision unfolded was abhorrent. Here’s a quick timeline of tweets.

Act I: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Act II: “Et tu, woje5pm?”

Act III: “The Fall of the House of Utah”

Act IV: “The One where Boston Falls into Chaos”

Act V: “All Quiet on the Hayward Front”

Act VI: “The Decision 2.0”

There was all kinds of confusion in the afternoon of July 4th. As I understand it, Hayward probably made his decision sometime around noon but had not informed the three teams he had been considering (Utah, Boston, and Miami). When the news leaked, his camp felt they needed to backtrack especially since he had likely already agreed to write a piece for the Player’s Tribune beforehand.

The leaked news understandably exhausted Jazz fans for the entirety of the day until Hayward himself confirmed it in the evening. But the handling of the Twitter disaster is not on Hayward but rather on his agent. He took time to make sure his departure was handled correctly, and it’s not his fault that Twitter has ears.

It would not be hard to confirm the reports but to also state that Hayward wanted to ensure that he informed all involved parties of his decision in person. That’s how his agent should have handled the situation, but Hayward definitely had other matters on the mind.

Hayward’s team of choice was not of the same ilk as other teams that have won free agency sweepstakes in the past.

The primary grievance brought against Kevin Durant’s decision to move to Golden State was that Durant’s Thunder had just blown a 3–1 lead to the Warriors in the 2016 Western Conference Finals. That season, the Warriors had won 73 games and boasted the unanimous MVP Stephen Curry. They did not need Durant to challenge for a title because they were already right on the cusp of one anyways.

When LeBron James left Cleveland for South Beach, there were several grievances. Like with Hayward, people questioned his method, but LeBron’s television special was far more humiliating and deliberate than Hayward’s article. But the team he chose was the Miami Heat, which boasted arguably the East’s second-best player at the time: Dwyane Wade. After faltering to the Boston Celtics once again, LeBron formed the greatest superteam of its time, and since then, the NBA has never been the same.

Ray Allen later left the Boston Celtics to join their chief rival, LeBron’s Miami Heat. For most Celtics fans, myself and his teammates included, it wasn’t the fact that Allen left but where he went that stung. At that time, there was personal resentment emanating from the Celtics towards the Heat, especially from leaders like Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett. They viewed Allen’s free agency decision as a betrayal.

For Gordon Hayward, the recent history between the Boston Celtics and the Utah Jazz is far from extensive. The teams have never squared off in the Finals, and there are no feuds between any of the current players.

Furthermore, the East has been weakened by an outflux of such superstars as Jimmy Butler to the Timberwolves, Paul George to the Thunder, and Paul Millsap to the Nuggets. Until Hayward moved to Boston, the best free agent to move east had been J.J. Reddick to the 76ers, leaving many people praying that a superstar would head to a weakened Eastern Conference.

Gordon Hayward was the prime candidate to leave a stacked West, and he did just that. Although it greatly decreases the Jazz’s chances to solidify a playoff spot, it clearly sets up the Celtics as the Cavaliers’ primary competition in the East. We may not have parity, but at least the available assets are conglomerating to give us the best heavyweight fights we can ask for.

Hayward never said the Jazz couldn’t win a title. He said he wants to win one with Brad Stevens.

Brad Stevens has seen the potential in Gordon Hayward since he was a high-school kid in Indiana. At at time when no college recruiters came knocking on the Hayward family door, Stevens was the one who hand-picked the 6'8" forward, and eventually Hayward followed him to Butler University.

What followed were two unexpected but unsuccessful title runs, the first of which still ranks as one of the most agonizing losses in American sports history.

The effect of Coach Stevens on Hayward’s life cannot be overstated as evidenced by his Player’s Tribune post, “Thank You, Utah.”

When he was looking for the right college to attend, Stevens was there to guide him. When he was debating when he should go pro, Stevens was there to guide him. When his NBA free agency rolled around, Stevens was there to guide him.

As Hayward says,

And that unfinished business we had together, back in 2010, when I left Butler for the NBA … as far as I’m concerned, all of these years later, we still have it: And that’s to win a championship.

Many people fans are taking this line as a shot against the Jazz, implying that they are incapable of winning a championship especially in light of the term “winning culture” that Hayward used to describe the city of Boston.

Two things are true here: Gordon Hayward wants to win a title with Brad Stevens. This has nothing to do with Utah because Brad Stevens doesn’t coach Utah, and even that isn’t a shot against Quin Synder whom Hayward directly credits for the majority of his development into a star. It has nothing to do with Snyder and everything to do with Stevens.

The second truth is that Boston does have a winning culture. It’s impossible to look at the last fifty years of Celtics basketball (or the last seventeen years of Boston sports) without acknowledging the winning culture of the city. Utah has its own legends: John Stockton, Karl Malone, and Pete Maravich. With a few more deep playoff runs, Hayward could have cemented himself into that list as well, but he chose not to do so.

Ultimately, Hayward did decide to go to Boston but not because “the Celtics are better than the Jazz” or “Boston is a better city than Salt Lake City.” Both have their merits, and Hayward gave his props where they were due. He is a free agent, free to make his own choices, and it was a choice that cannot be singularly traced back to a bias for one franchise over another.