Celtics forward Gordon Hayward broke his leg less than six minutes into the 2017 NBA season.

He didn’t play a single game as the team went all the way to Eastern Conference finals without him.

Speaking recently on Barstool’s Pardon my Take podcast, Hayward admitted that there was a fiber of his being, a segment of his soul that was pulling for the Celtics to lose.

That part of the podcast was transcribed by NBC Sports Boston:

“I don’t think you’d be human if there wasn’t a part of you that was like, ‘I hope that we lose,'” Hayward said (it’s about at the 40-minute mark of the podcast).

“[Being irked at the team’s winning] happened, too, at the very beginning of the season,” he said. “Like, I got hurt, I think we lost our first two games, but then we went on like an 18 or 19 game win streak [Actually, it was 16]. And I was laying in bed like ‘Come on! What’s going on?’ There’s a part of me that’s like, ‘Dude, they are winning without me, what’s the deal?’ But then there’s another side of me that’s like, ‘Okay, this is why I came to Boston. We’re going to be good, we’re going to have a chance to win the whole thing.’ Rooting for them, these are your teammates.”

I personally don’t see what the big deal is, but you can imagine how well this would go over if Carson Wentz said it:

“Well, you know, I’m happy for Nick Foles, but I’d be fine if the Patriots won the Super Bowl. I’d like to be out there leading the team.”

It would be blasphemy. Sacrilege. Benedict Arnold bullshit. “Cut his ass!” would be the rallying cry of fake Philly tough guys from Secane to Southampton.

But I think Hayward is on to something here. I think it’s a very human thing to want a Boston team to lose.