Kristaps Porzingis shares his message to Jaylen Brown after urging Celtics star to rest ailing knee
"We definitely talked. I gave him my point of view."
Celtics big man Kristaps Porzingis didn’t mince words last week when asked about teammate Jaylen Brown and his ailing knee over the final stretch of the 2024-25 regular season.
Despite Boston being locked into the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, Brown continued to play regular-season games for the Celtics down the stretch — even if that lingering knee pain sapped away some of his athleticism on the hardwood.
While Brown dismissed concerns that continuing to put his knee under duress in essentially meaningless games would prove costly, Porzingis urged Brown to rest ahead of what could be another long playoff run this spring.
“He’s a tough dude,” Porzingis said of Brown after Boston’s 119-117 win over the Knicks on April 8. “He always preaches his warrior mindset and he lives by it, but to what extent do we need that right now? Maybe he needs to take care of it and make sure he’s going to be ready for the most important moments.”
“So, I think we just have to encourage him to make sure he does everything he needs to prepare, to get it healthy, and to prepare for what is going to come,” he added. “I think he’s a smart guy, so he will. It just shows his heart, how much he wants to be out there for games that maybe don’t mean super much for us right now but that’s who he is and we appreciate him for that.”
Porzingis’ words seem to have resonated with Brown, who ultimately sat out Boston’s final three regular-season games — and appears to be on track to play in Boston’s first-round playoff series against the Magic.
Speaking at Celtics shootaround at the Auerbach Center on Wednesday, Porzingis acknowledged that he shared a similar message to Brown privately when it came to putting his health first over the final weeks of regular-season action.
“We definitely talked about it, just because of my history — and also with some of the knee stuff that bothered me in the past,” Porzingis said. “We definitely talked. I gave him my point of view and what I thought could help him, and he did the things necessary to be as healthy and feeling good as possible for this run that we’re about to have.
“And he looks good. He looks good. He’s always saying that he feels good, but he actually looks good, and that’s most important.”
Porzingis is no stranger to the injury bug, as the Celtics center/power forward missed a majority of the team’s run to a 18th championship last spring while battling calf ailments and an eventual torn tendon in his ankle that required offseason surgery.
While Porzingis seems to be at full health entering this latest playoff push, he has plenty of experience when it comes to not pushing his body above its limits — especially during regular-season matchups.
“Not to go into too much detail, but [telling him] stuff that just has helped me,” Porzingis added. “It helped me, and we have some similar stuff, maybe. He has something going on; maybe I know more or less what it is, so I just gave him my point of view.”
While Brown has not spoken with reporters since the end of the regular season, his teammates were impressed with his conditioning during practices this week.
“He looked great today,” Horford said of Brown on Tuesday. “I was very happy to see him out there doing everything. It’s a really good sign for us … There’s a lot of things that you have to deal with when you’re in that position.
Brown has missed 19 games this season, the most in a year since the season. Over the weekend, Joe Mazzulla confirmed that Brown received pain management injections during the week to help deal with his right-knee pain.
Even with that treatment, Mazzulla added that Brown is still expected to be in the lineup for Game 1 against the Magic on Sunday afternoon.
“100 percent,” Mazzulla said when asked of his confidence in Brown playing in Game 1.
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