Haywood's pretty good, but it remains to be seen if he is "one quarter of your salary cap" good. "Market Value" isn't always the best indicator of true value. I thought Haywood was a good player here, but i have my doubts that he is going to be what Boston thinks he is going to be. We joked about "White Lebron," but deep down knew that Haywood was the second best player on the team. He was never going to be the driving force on this team. I think he knew that and it chafed him.
He won't be that on the Celtics either, IT will. The difference is that IT will be the driving force with the ball in his hands and is an inferior player to Haywood. Do you really think that contract year IT is going to defer to "Coach's Pet?" Haywood seems pretty insular to me, and it will be interesting to see how he handles adversity in this new situation. With legendary history comes legendary expectations and needing to have 54 year old Joe Jesus come and bail you out in crunch time probably won't fly too well.
Over all, my feeling is that if you are paying a guy the max, he better be a lot better than the max, because that is the only true way to get value in the NBA. If your max player is just on the cusp of being worth the money, it really puts you in a bad spot meaning you will need some guys on rookie contracts carrying the load. That means they need to pan out on year 1 and not take seven years to develop. It is probably for the best that they don't play the same damn position as your maxed players. . .
It will be interesting to see what happens.