SALT LAKE CITY - When Gordon Hayward left the guests' locker room on Friday night at Vivint Brilliant Home Field, through the passage and out onto the floor for warm-ups, the boos poured down from the fans.

Each time he contacted the ball in warm-ups, the boos returned once more. The boos came when Hayward's Boston Celtics ran out to the floor before tipoff, Hayward the last one to turn out. They came the loudest when his name was reported amid presentations. The sellout horde of 18,306 - including one fan who had doctored an old Utah Jazz No. 20 so the nameplate perused "Defeatist" rather than "HAYWARD" - booed so noisily that you couldn't hear his name.

They booed each time he made history the ball. They booed when he registered with the amusement. They booed when he looked at of the diversion. They booed when he made a shot (despite the fact that, to be reasonable, you could make out some scattered acclaim, as well). They cheered amid the primary quarter when Hayward slammed into his previous colleague Joe Ingles at midcourt and tumbled to the ground. They booed and snickered when Hayward airballed an open jumper from point-clear range in the second quarter.

What's more, in conclusive moment of the final quarter, as the Jazz had at long last pulled away in what might turn into a 123-115 triumph, Hayward went to the free toss line. Furthermore, Jazz fans recited as one how they truly felt about Hayward, 16 months after he abandoned the little market establishment for the brilliant lights of the Boston Celtics.

"WE DON'T MISS YOU!" they recited. "WE DON'T MISS YOU!"

"I sort of expected a portion of that," Hayward said with a shrug after his first diversion back in the city where he put in the initial seven years of his profession. "It's a piece of the diversion. They were booing me from the get-go. In warm-ups as well. Each time I contacted the ball even in warm-ups, I was getting booed. That was somewhat clever to me. In any case, when you're in the diversion, you're not stressed over that. That sort of vanishes."

At the point when Hayward left Utah, the torment of Jazz fans was intense. As Hayward had formed into a star here, the Jazz had abandoned a NBA bit of hindsight - a group that missed the playoffs in five of six years, including one season where they won just 25 diversions - into a power that won 51 amusements and a playoff arrangement in his last season.

At that point he cleared out. Utah, a longshot place in any case, felt abandoned. He could have been the substance of the establishment in the city where his first youngster was conceived. Rather, he went elsewhere. Him leaving didn't feel like a straightforward business choice; it felt individual. Some Jazz fans played out the odd 21st-century sports purging custom of taking a Hayward Jazz shirt, drenching it in fuel, consuming it, and afterward posting the video via web-based networking media.

As Nobel Harmony Prize champ Elie Weisel once stated, "The inverse of adoration isn't despise. It's lack of interest."

Utah's sentiments toward Gordon Hayward, and the manner in which they quickly moved from veneration to animosity, shown that.

And after that the most far-fetched thing occurred.

A magnetic child named Donovan Mitchell moved into town.

What's more, the Utah Jazz proceeded onward.

The pullover consuming custom is as quite a bit of a piece of advanced games as the feeling filled return diversion. It's something a star player must experience when he leaves a place that he once called home. At the point when LeBron left Cleveland the first run through, fans consumed his shirts, and after that the Cavaliers went from a 61-win group that made the Eastern Gathering elimination rounds to a 19-win group. At the point when Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City, fans consumed his pullovers, and the Thunder went from a 55-win group that made the Western Gathering Finals to a 47-win group that lost in the first round. At the point when Shaq left Orlando - well, it was too soon for the online life performative-shirt consuming custom, yet the Enchantment went from a 60-win group that made the Eastern Meeting Finals to a 45-win group that got ricocheted in the first round.

This shouldn't imply that Hayward was the equivalent of any of those players.

But since of the manner in which he abandoned Utah, the feelings felt the equivalent.

After Hayward left, the Jazz abandoned a 51-win group that made the Western Gathering elimination rounds to … a 48-win group that made the Western Meeting elimination rounds.

Essentially, a similar group.

Just with another, more youthful, more dangerous and more appealling star player in charge.

"I don't figure you can deny the planning," David Locke, the Jazz's radio play-by-play broadcaster, explained to me concerning why Mitchell has so revived the Jazz and their fans. "Our hearts have been tore out, stepped on. Gordon's flight was pulverizing to the fan base. What's more, it wasn't only that Gordon left. It's that he cleared out to some degree unfeelingly, without a thank you, without an acknowledgment of any responsibility, without making reference to a partner in his Player's Tribune article. The fan base felt as if they'd recently been utilized. So here came this child with this bliss and energy to him - even before he begun playing incredible a year ago. Return to Summer Class, directly after Gordon left, and the group's as of now joined to him. There's a planning thing that was flawless here."

Thus, despite the fact that Jazz fans got a handle on constrained to belt the boos on Friday night for his arrival, it didn't feel like the boos were all that outrage filled. Rather, it was relatively similar to this was a soul changing experience for Jazz fans. Without a doubt, they were profoundly harmed when Hayward left a year ago. However, things have changed from that point forward. Regardless they felt constrained to boo him, similar to this was what was anticipated from them, yet the emotions weren't as crude. The Jazz had proceeded onward with another star. What's more, there was the sympathy that accompanied Hayward's horrifying leg damage from last season, in his first diversion for his new group.

"It's been quite a while," Jazz head mentor Quin Snyder said. "It's quite a while prior."

What it felt like on Friday night was at last less a disdainful showcase of being a fan than a reconnection between two ex-sweethearts - two individuals who'd had some incredible occasions together once upon a time, yet who had both proceeded onward, and who had both turned out to be better for it.

"We've all lived homecomings of sorts," Celtics head mentor Brad Stevens said. "Everyone handles those the manner in which they handle them. I think clearly as time passes by it might get simpler and less demanding. Be that as it may, the first run through back is dependably somewhat exceptional."

Thus Hayward grinned in warm-ups when the fans booed him. He grinned amid presentations. He didn't grin amid the diversion itself - he was excessively centered around doing his activity - however he smiled while discussing it amid postgame interviews. This was as yet a place that gave him warm sentiments.

"I put in seven years here," he said. "I assembled some extremely extraordinary connections. Perhaps fearing it somewhat, simply the furor of the entire thing. (Be that as it may, I grew up here, coming in as a freshman. As I enhanced, I grew up too, wound up getting hitched, had two or three children, had one of them here. Only a considerable measure of affectionate recollections here. The greatest one was the procedure that we began. We weren't great as far as possible up to my last year when we won that round of the playoffs."

The cameras turned off, and Hayward strolled toward a VIP relax in the insides of the field before making a beeline for the group transport. Hayward embraced the Jazz's head of advertising and visited. Hayward's significant other, pregnant with their third kid, guided her better half to a security watch he had been close with, and Hayward strolled over and gave him an embrace.

The feelings were muddled. Be that as it may, for a minute, it felt like Gordon Hayward was back home.