Gordon Hayward has long been a prolific gamer, with his face featured on Best Buy posters for mechanical keyboard from HyperX to doing commentary at the League of Legends championships at the Garden in early September.

Like many millennial gamers, Hayward’s roots come from Halo, the first-person shooter pretty much everyone who owned an Xbox played in the 2000s. But Hayward wasn’t just your every day Halo player back in high school and eventually, Brad Stevens learned just how serious his next star player was about it.

“I was on a competitive Halo team and we would enter Halo tournaments for money,” Hayward said in a video interview with Rolling Stone. “When I started getting recruited for basketball, I didn’t really think about it. But there’s a lot of NCAA rules and violations as far as like, making money and doing certain things.

“I had to call coach Stevens to ask him if its was okay to play in a Halo tournament. I’m sure that was the last thing he wanted his new recruit to call him about. But he was okay with it and we actually won the tournament. So we won money, which was cool.”

Hayward eventually won a lot more money in the NBA, now on a massive max contract with the Boston Celtics. While he left professional tennis and gaming behind to become an NBA star, he still finds himself playing massive eSport games like Overwatch and League of Legends all the time.

“Ironically, during the season, I probably have more time to play video games, because we’re on the road a lot and on the road, I can bring my laptop and play.”

Gaming is therapeutic, an escape from focusing on whatever went wrong in the previous game. It utilizes his brain still firing at full capacity coming down from a game, but immerses him significantly so he can avoid bogging down in the details.

“It’s hard for me to fall asleep after games. It’s hard after games to not constantly think about the game. ‘What did I do right? What did I do wrong? What could I have done better?’ And video games is a way where you’re not like, constantly questioning about it. Because sometimes, it’s best just to not think about how the game went and you’ve got to move on to the next one.”

Hayward is renowned among pro athletes for his level of play in League of Legends, perhaps the biggest eSport in the world. While Hayward enjoys competing against League of Legends players, he would like to take on some fellow NBA players too.

“I’m still looking for an NBA player that’s better than me at League of Legends. I do know that Jeremy Lin plays DotA. He might be the one guy where, if he played League, he would probably be pretty decent. If he would come over to League, I would take on that challenge.”

Lin is unfortunately also out for the season, so it sounds like a challenge both players could make happen some time soon.

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