LOS ANGELES -- Gordon Hayward walked around the Celtics locker room at Staples Center on Tuesday night happily greeting teammates. He has seen them plenty at the team's practice facility in Waltham over the last few months during countless hours of ankle rehab. This week though, the organization called an audible and elected to bring him out west for a few days to mix things up.
"Basically, one of the things that we wanted to do with him was change his environment just to move a little bit," Brad Stevens explained. "So he’s going to be here for these two games and then he will stay here in Southern California for a week or 10 days with a couple of our staff and then rejoin us in Boston."
Stevens also explained the team's rationale in trying to change break Hayward's routine in Waltham.
“I just think people who have been through this long process – one of the things about us is we’re jumping on a plane every four or five days," Stevens said. "And he’s used to that. And he has been in the same routine doing the same thing for three or four months without that. And so we just wanted to have him here for a couple of games while we’re out west and then for a few days after that leave him out here.”