Jaylen Brown expected to return to practice in a matter of days following bizarre hand injury
Brown needed five stitches on his right hand after he suffered a cut when picking up broken glass.
The Celtics seemingly survived a playoff scare before the postseason even began.
Star wing Jaylen Brown cut his hand while picking up shards of glass from a broken vase on Thursday, requiring five stitches. While Brown missed the final two games of the regular season, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said he’s expected to practice sometime during the week.
“I think he’ll be practicing by the middle-to-the-end of the week and be fine,” Stevens said. “So, we’re okay there.”
The Celtics’ strong regular season, plus the recent implementation of the play-in tournament, certainly help Brown’s chances of not missing any playoff action. With the play-in tournament held during the week, the Celtics won’t play again until next weekend following Sunday’s regular-season finale. Holding the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, the Celtics will face the winner of Tuesday’s Hawks-Heat play-in game in the first round of the playoffs.
If Brown is able to play in Game 1, it’ll mark a rare occasion that the Celtics have had all of their rotational players active at the start of the postseason, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Boston was without center Robert Williams at the beginning of the 2022 playoffs and it didn’t have Brown at all in its first-round playoff loss to Brooklyn in 2021.
The Celtics’ full rotation was active at the start of the 2020 playoffs, but Gordon Hayward suffered an ankle injury in Game 1 of the first round that caused him to miss nearly the rest of the postseason. Marcus Smart missed almost the entire 2019 postseason and Boston didn’t have Hayward or Kyrie Irving in the 2018 playoffs.
Brown’s been an integral piece to the Celtics’ success this season. He’s scored a career-high 26.6 points per game and also had a career-high in rebounds per game (6.9) and matched a career-high in assists per game (3.5).
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