Celtics Notebook: Jaylen Brown sidelined as he recovers from infection, Romeo Langford assigned to Maine

Jaylen Brown has missed two straight games for the Celtics due to illness and his absence will extend into this week as he recovers from an infection. The swingman will not travel with the team to Cleveland today as they begin their three-game road trip with a matchup against the Cavs on Tuesday night. Brad Stevens wouldn’t rule Brown out entirely for the trip but his current condition takes him out of action for Tuesday.

"Jaylen's still feeling some effects of the illness, but he's also been dealing with an infection,” Stevens explained. “So he won't travel with us, and hopefully he'll be back sooner rather than later. He may join us on our trip, but he won’t travel tomorrow."

Stevens refused to get into the details of the infection but it’s worth noting that Brown has been active this week. He took part in a mental health panel at the C’s practice facility on Monday morning so a return later this week does not seem like a stretch.

“I don’t think he’ll play tomorrow, but he could join us by Wednesday or Thursday,” Stevens said.

The Celtics should get a health boost in their frontcourt even without Brown on Tuesday as both Rob Williams and Enes Kanter returned to practice today. Kanter has missed the last four games with a sore knee and Williams sat out Friday’s win with a sore hip.

The Celtics have been playing it cautiously with the veteran Kanter as he recovers and likely will just ease him back into action once he returns, rather than giving him regular minutes.

“I hope so,” Kanter said of playing against the Cavs. “That’s what the plan is. We did contact today and it didn’t bother me at all, so yeah. I’m ready.”

The timing couldn’t be much better for Boston with Kanter’s return as a pair of elite offensive rebounders await Tuesday night in Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love.

The Celtics have ranked in the bottom-five in the league with defensive rebounding since Kanter has been out so he’s eager to try to help keep Thompson off the glass in his return.

“I enjoy it a lot, because obviously he’s one of the guys that just plays hard, a player that plays with his heart,” Kanter said of guarding Thompson. “I think it’s a good matchup. I’ve been going against him nine years now, I know his game, he knows my game, so I think it’s going to be a pretty good matchup for me.”

The Cavs have been surprisingly frisky in the early part of the season under new head coach John Beilein despite looking like one of the worst teams in the league in the preseason.

"They're doing a lot of new stuff from the time that we played them in the preseason,” Stevens explained. “In fact, they’ve probably tweaked and changed as much as any team with regard to how they're playing. And I think a lot of that has to do with playing to the strengths of Love and Thompson, who are great. And Thompson didn’t play in either of our preseason games, and he's had a huge impact. And then those guards going downhill are all scary. The games I've watched, they've played pretty well, and certainly in a couple of their wins, I thought they dictated it the whole game. If you can't the effort and intensity of Thompson and others, that's difficult."

Romeo Langford to Maine

In an expected move, the Celtics sent rookie guard Romeo Langford to the Maine Red Claws for a week of practice during their G-League training camp. Langford has been sidelined with various injuries through the preseason and summer, so the team is eager to get him some extended reps before bringing him back to the big club. It’s a bit telling that they are making the move even with their depth on the wing thin right now with Brown sidelined.

“I think the biggest thing was we were just weighing, is it better to go practice for a full week, get ready to play, or is it better to be available for really, really spotty minutes?” Stevens explained. “And it just makes sense based on the amount of time he missed early on. And then the knee thing happening and then he missed more time. So we just need him to get as many reps as possible. We had him play Giannis in practice last week when we were preparing for Milwaukee and I thought it was his best day. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was the day with the most reps. So I just think he needs reps. We think he could really help us, and this is the first step to doing that, I think.”

Langford will join rookies Tacko Fall and Tremont Waters in Maine for the foreseeable future. The team sent Fall back up to Maine after having him active on Friday for the first of his possible 45 days with the big club while on a two-way contract. For now, the team is going to be vigilant in how they use that availability.

“I mean we’ve played multiple games now down two bigs,” Stevens said. “And that’s only five games in. So now we’re going to have him come up for one day (at a time) a lot I think, rather than a week at a time or two weeks at a time.”