Your Thanksgiving Turkey Cannot Look Worse Than Gordon Hayward’s

Gordon Hayward is an incredibly rich human being after being given yet another massive contract that will pay him $30 million a year for the next four years to play basketball for the Charlotte Hornets.

They say money can’t buy taste, but it also apparently cannot buy a deft touch in the kitchen either. On Thanksgiving, Hayward apparently decided he was going to take over the turkey roasting duties and the result is one of the worst looking birds you’ll see this year.

Look, cooking isn’t for everyone and this year, more than any other in recent memory, we have people trying their hand at cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time because of the pandemic that is keeping so many away from their families — and, in turn, the person in the family that has the Thanksgiving meal dialed in. However, there’s no excuse for this and honestly I don’t know where to begin, but we’re going to try and breakdown all the things that went wrong here for Gordon.

First, why is this turkey in such shambles in the roasting pan? How do you even end up with a turkey that’s half disassembled when it comes out of the oven? Did he read about spatchcocking but only get, like, a quarter of the way through and decide he could figure the rest out? Did he just start ripping it apart when it came out like some kind of savage rather than, you know, putting it on a carving board and going to work like an adult? Like, the turkey breast isn’t supposed to just come off like that — also, whoever called that the head…no.

On a similar note, how is he having this much difficulty carving this turkey? You pull it out of the roasting pan, put it on a board, let it rest (this also seems to be something he has failed to do), and then slice it. Somehow, he’s pulled some of the dark meat, left the bottom of the bird just destroyed, and ripped the breast off to hack into it.

Finally, the skin on this turkey is a crime. It’s a translucent almost green color, which I guess means at least there was some effort to put some herbs on there — and please, please season your birds folks, this is critical — but did they boil this turkey? There’s not even an attempt at being crisp. That skin is completely flaccid and inedible, and it is upsetting me.

I don’t know what video they found on YouTube — as teased at the end of this video — but this is not a ringing endorsement for that particular turkey tutorial. Gordon, you have an immense amount of money and I understand the desire to do something on your own for your family, but please, I beg of you, for the sake of your family, just pay someone to cook next year. Hell, I’m available if needed.