One of my best friends back in my hometown tore both his ACL and MCL fooling around at a basketball practice trying to save a ball from going out of bounds with nobody around him. I have two friends here at college that have torn their ACL's as well. One was also while playing basketball and the other was doing something as innocent as giving a friend a ride on his back. These injuries are terrible and heartbreaking with their long recovering time and grueling rehab. I used to think these were the worst injuries in sports.

But I was dreadfully reminded otherwise on Tuesday night.

With the clock stopped at the Boston Garden at 6 minutes and 45 seconds left in the first quarter of the season opener pairing the Cleveland Cavilers and the Boston Celtics, Gordon Hayward laid on the floor with a devastating injury that will leave out for the rest of the season. Celtics head coach Brad Stevens has come out and said that Hayward's was diagnosed with a dislocated ankle and a fractured tibia. The injury had me gasping in shock, as it had many of the other players and spectators at the Garden that night. This injury is terrible to watch live as it is one of the most graphic things you could see on television. Sadly, this isn't the first time we have seen such an awful leg injury on the type of stage as an NBA game.

The most recent of these injuries happened in August of 2014 when Paul George, one of the newest members of the Oklahoma City Thunder, landed on his leg and suffered a compound fracture of both his tibia and fibula. This occurred during a live scrimmage while George was preparing to playing for Team USA in the Olympics.

A year earlier we saw an injury that could almost be stated as worse than what happened to George. In a NCAA tournament game during March Madness, Kevin Ware was playing for the University of Louisville and landed on his leg in a terrible fashion after a closeout of an opposing Duke player. This injury was stated as an open fracture of his leg, so open that everyone watching the highly anticipated Final Four game between the Cardinals and the Blue Devils could see from the stands or even their couches at home. It was a truly devastating injury to watch.

The great news for all of these athletes is that both Ware and George are back playing professional basketball and are fully recovered from their injuries. With that being said, the long road for Hayward has a light at the end of the tunnel.

Hayward and the Boston Celtics agreed to a contract during the offseason that would pay Hayward 127 million dollars over four years in Boston. He played barely 5 minutes of the regular season on that new deal before the injury occurred. Boston made a lot of moves during the summer to bring great players like Hayward and Kyrie Irving to help fuel a championship run in the Eastern Conference of the NBA. While the NBA season has only just begun, it can go without saying that this is a huge loss for the Celtics. Hopefully nobody is thinking too hard about the state of one basketball team one game into their season, and everyone can stop and wish for a healthy recovery Gordon Hayward.