Hornets GM Mitch Kupchak was surprised to get Gordon Hayward

Hayward signed a four-year, $120 million contract and officially came to Charlotte via a sign-and-trade.
Hornets GM Mitch Kupchak didn’t think Charlotte had much of a chance at landing Gordon Hayward in free agency last offseason, Chris Sheridan of Basketball News reports. While Charlotte had the means to create enough cap room for Hayward, the Hornets were surprised that he opted out of his contract with Boston, let alone wanted to go to Charlotte. Hayward signed a four-year, $120 million contract and officially came to Charlotte via a sign-and-trade. “I didn’t think he would opt out of that and want to leave Boston,” Kupchak said. “That doesn’t happen very often, so when that was happening, even at the very end, even though we tried and we did everything we could do — and it was a good feeling that he was going to come to Charlotte — there was a big part of me that said, ‘This just doesn’t happen very often, that a player of this caliber will go to a small market.’ So I wasn’t really sure until we got his signature that he was going to come. … That just kind of happened.” A similar scenario unfolded two years

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