Hayward is also one of the greatest players in Butler’s basketball history. He led the Bulldogs to the NCAA national championship game in 2010, narrowly missing a half-court shot as the buzzer expired that would have given Butler a title.

I hate that the AP article also started with this. It was debated to death 15 years ago and the myth needs to die.

That was never a close shot or a narrow miss. It only looks that way on television because you are viewing it in two dimensions from 50 yards out. The NCAA immediately marketed this shot to death because they needed a cinderella David vs Goliath story in a nasty era of basketball that saw the winner score a whole 61 points in a 40 minute game.

A undefended halfcourt shot is statistically made about 12% of the time for high percentage NBA players. A half-court heave in a game goes in about 3% of the time; however, this is generally at the end of a quarter (vice game winning shot) where the shooter is undefended. For all intents and purposes, I’m considering NBA statistics here because it’s all we have to go on, and because there were multiple NBA players on the court that game, of whom Hayward was by far the best player.

Hayward launched this thing while running, defended, and time expiring, in a football stadium. It didn’t softly clank off the back of the rim with the chance of falling in; it brutally slammed hard right into the backboard, and then only altered its trajectory as it popped the outside of the front left of the rim by chance.

That shot was never going in. It didn’t even hit the inside of the rim.

This story takes away from an otherwise solid NBA career by Hayward. His best years were on the Jazz; he never recovered after that injury and was likely robbed from a hall of fame career.