Gordon Hayward has a great natural offensive game and is young enough where he hasn't begun to reach his physical maturity. He is far from horrible athletically, but his current lack of explosion will limit what he can do on the NBA level compared to what we saw throughout the Tournament.

Hayward's perimeter shot is far from terrible and looks like it should be more effective, but it is mechanically flawed. He has too much left hand on his shot, as it extends almost even with his right-hand follow-through. The purest shooters will have almost no movement at all with their left (guide) hand where it is completely silent, but it is far too pronounced for Hayward.

Hayward does a good job of setting his feet, squaring up to the bucket and he has good arc and rotation, but the follow-through holds him back from being a far more accurate shooter. I have little doubt that his shooting flaws are correctable and will be sorted out, but this isn't a part of his game his team will immediately be able to rely upon.

There is sometimes a common logic that small school stars will see their shooting efficiency increase in the NBA because they won't see the same kind of defensive attention as they did in school, but Hayward frequently received clean, wide-open looks and teams were much more concerned with stopping his dribble penetration.

Because Hayward isn't a pure shooter and possibly never become one, he doesn't have that safety net of becoming an off the bench three-point specialist. His NBA success could become an all or nothing equation of whether or not he can successful be a shotmaker off the dribble, which is most translatable skill.

He's extremely clever with his dribble and though he won't blow by his man with unguardable quickness, Hayward will juke and change speeds just enough to lose his man to create a scoring chance.  He won't take the ball to the rim, instead pulling up for a mid-range jumper which he typically gets off cleanly with good rise. Since Hayward isn't able to take the ball all the way to the bucket, he won't be effective enough to be even a second or third ISO option on most teams.

Hayward will keep his head up, looking for teammates to feed the ball to and tends to like to kick the ball back out to the perimeter.

Because he is so good with the dribble, Hayward can play a lot of point forward and he is very good in transition.

Even though he had good height for the college game, Hayward has no post game to speak of whatsoever. Potentially, he can try to be a tall shooting guard and shoot over the top of defenders, which would also lead to mismatches in the post, but it is simply not something he has experience doing competitively.

When he doesn't have the ball in his hands, Hayward tends to allow himself to be too stationary. He will needlessly become a bystander and this makes scouts question whether or not he is capable of being an impact player when his usage decreases substantially from where it was at Butler.

Hayward can defend multiple positions and that ability will increase when he gets stronger as he physically matures.

When in help defense, he contests the passing lanes very well and is generally a nuisance. His individual defense was consistently strong on the college level, though he could use a little more power and lift from his lower body when defending shots.

There are enough collective reasons for optimism to suggest Hayward will have a productive NBA career, but if he is unable to improve that shot or be more functionally athletic, he does seem destined for 10th or 11th man status.


Chris Reina is the executive editor of RealGM. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cr_reina.