What role will Jaylen Brown play when he returns?

It appears the Celtics will be back at full strength on Thursday night against the Knicks with Jaylen Brown planning to return to the floor following a four-game absence due to a bruised tailbone.

"I'm good, I'm ready to go," Brown said Tuesday before practice. "I'm feeling better every day. Just looking forward to being there on Thursday. Let's keep this win streak going."

Brown suffered the injury 10 days ago during a hard fall in the closing moments of a loss to the Magic and has suffered from back spasms and soreness in the wake of the injury. However, a quiet Celtics schedule has allowed him to earn plenty of rest without missing a significant chunk of games. He took part in a full workout on Monday and came out of the session feeling good.

"I feel pretty good," Brown said. "The rest was good for my body and other parts of my body, so I should be ready to go on Thursday."

The positive progress will give Brown a chance to get reintegrated into the fold in practice with a couple days of prep ahead of Thursday's matchup.

"He's going to go through practice," Brad Stevens said. "I have not been given or been told that there's any restrictions on his practice. So he went through a hard workout yesterday and felt fine today. Should be ready to go."

The question now, of course, is what role Brown will play when he returns to the fold on Thursday night.

He started every game he played this season before getting sidelined with the injury two weeks ago. Now, with the C's stringing together three straight wins in his absence (4-0 overall on the year when he sits), the assumption is that Brown will take a seat, something he welcomed last week when asked about it.

"We don't want to be looking down the line and trying to figure out, 'What if?' or 'Woulda, coulda,' whatever," Brown said last Friday. "Whatever it is that we can make it work now, I'm totally happy with that. Winning answers everyone's questions and figures everything out. If we win, everything else will be fine."

Stevens was not willing to commit to any specific lineup decision just yet though.

"We'll figure that out when we get there," Stevens said. "I think that, obviously, I don't know if he'll be under a restriction or not. I haven't gotten to any of those questions with our training staff."

Stevens is doing his best to protect the ego of Brown here but the obvious choice right now is to stick with the hot hand and leave Marcus Smart in the starting five. The more interesting question that's worth wondering is just how much Brown will play once he returns to the fold.

He's been arguably one of the team's worst contributors all year on the offensive end with career-lows in FG percentage (39 percent) and 3-point shooting (25 percent). The trouble for Boston's offense within that slump is the fact that Brown has maintained a similar usage rate to last season, attempting the fourth most shots on the team (10.4 per game). It's no coincidence that the Celtics have played their best three games of the year on the offensive end during the past week with Brown watching on the sidelines.

Brown's 28 minutes per game won't disappear entirely when he's out of the fold, but the question that awaits now is how much of it he gets back with Smart thriving in the starting five and Gordon Hayward looking more like himself by the day. A 15-20 minute average per game would be a sharp reduction but a justified one for Stevens as he tries to maintain the offensive momentum and keep lineups together that have been meshing well.

Of course, Brown snapping out of his shooting funk may make life harder for Stevens on this front, but there was always going to be someone on this roster that gets the short end of the stick in regards to minutes. Earlier in the year, it ended up being the wrong guys (Marcus Smart, Marcus Morris) that were playing a little bit less than they should. Brown seems to be the most likely candidate to fall into that designation on Thursday night for the foreseeable future.

That's not to say Brown won't be a factor when he returns. He should have several more opportunities to succeed against second unit defenses while playing alongside Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward and Aron Baynes. He also showed some progress on the offensive end prior to his injury (four straight games scoring in double digits), especially when it comes to attacking the basket (zero 3-point attempts against Dallas on nine field goal attempts).

If he can integrate that type of shot selection and efficiency into his game more, he'll ultimately get the chance to work his way back into the starting five. For now, the guess here is we will see Brown play a similar role to what we saw during the second half of his rookie season. He'll get his minutes but he'll be on a far shorter leash with a lot less asked of him on the offensive end. Ultimately, that may be the best contribution to winning for this team right now.