Jaylen Brown (knee) expects to play Sunday vs. Nets; Semi Ojeleye doubtful

WALTHAM — The Celtics practiced for the first time in over a month on Saturday afternoon and they were close to full strength for the session. Jaylen Brown took part in the full practice with his teammates and is expected to return to the lineup for Sunday's matchup with the Nets at the TD Garden after a two-game absence.

"Feeling a lot better," Brown explained. "Doing a lot of cutting exercises. I'm looking to play tomorrow."

Brown suffered some strained ligaments in his knee after a collision with Markieff Morris during Monday's Christmas Day game and was seen leaving the locker room with a crutch after that contest. His recovery has moved quickly since then though.

"I think I've made really fast improvements, faster than I thought it would be," he said. "The trajectory of it is doing really well. I just want to keep taking care of my body so I don't have any further injuries."

It's possible that Brown will wear a brace or some other kind of protection on his knee for his return.

"I'm going to see how it feels tomorrow," Brown said. "I don't want to play in a brace but something restrictive to keep it stable. I don't want to re-injure it or if something were to happen, I want something to be there to catch it."

Semi Ojeleye has missed three games since going down with a back injury last weekend, but he appears to be further away than Brown from getting back to the floor.

"Semi did a lot less than Jaylen," Brad Stevens said. "He’s still pretty sore. Getting better. But the timeline is probably a little more like Shane’s earlier this year where Shane missed about 12 days. He might have played a couple minutes in that Indiana game and just couldn’t do it. But he’s probably—we’re nearing the end of it, but probably err on the side of caution with him tomorrow."

Stevens also plans on having Marcus Morris available for back-to-back games for the first time this month on Sunday, assuming his knee is feeling good in the wake of today's practice. The head coach touched on how tough things have been on the veteran over the past few weeks during his recovery and return to the floor.

"It’s super frustrating (for him)," Stevens said. "Because you think back to when he played a little bit more in the Philly and Phoenix games, he was great, right, and then five days later he doesn’t feel as good again. So I know how frustrating it’s been because it’s so hard to sit out for three weeks and then play your first game on Christmas Day, in that game, in that kind of attention and everything else, and you’re just trying to find your rhythm. And it took him a few quarters to do that, but obviously that last quarter there that he played, or that last stint that he played, was really good. We need him to score, we need him to be aggressive, we need him to be able to guard multiple positions. And I thought he did a lot of that in the third and fourth quarters on whatever day we played Houston.”

Other Practice Odds and Ends

Brad Stevens on the Celtics getting away with multiple travels on the two-minute report: “Yeah, I saw one of them. I haven’t even looked at that report. I don’t know which ones they’re talking about specifically. But I guess over the course of time there’s so much human error involved. And that’s why you have three officials to make it as seamless as possible. But those guys work their tails off to try to do the best job that they can. And with two that’d be really hard. But I’m sure there will be times throughout the year, or there have been times, where those things, those calls come out. And as players and coaches you just move on. We don’t really look at them. I understand why the league does it because I think the transparency’s really important. But I also think that there’s not much to be gained from a player’s, coach’s or probably even an official’s standpoint because everybody’s trying to do the best they can when they’re out there.”

Stevens on the first day of practice for the team in a month: "It was good to be back out on the practice court. We talked about having to kind of reestablish a mindset of practicing and making sure that we utilize these days to get better and improve, get ready for the next game and everything else. Guys were good, guys were focused. We had good energy, as you would expect, after very few people coming through here yesterday, which was the right thing after that stretch.