After the Celtics 1-4 road trip, Ime Udoka promised a hard look at the team’s rotations and lineup combinations. Today, he was handed a big change: the return of Jaylen Brown.
“Getting Jaylen back is a big piece of that,” Udoka said after the team’s Sunday morning practice. “Don’t want to overreact to what we haven’t had and make changes just to make changes.”
Brown has been itching to play for a couple of weeks, but the team has been holding off on another premature return. Brown admitted his first return was a bit too soon.
“Yeah, it was probably smart. It definitely is smart for the long run,” Brown said of waiting the extra few games. “I wanted to come back just because I admire the fight – at times – the fight of this team defensively, how we’ve been all season prior to these last four or five games. We’ve hung our hat on defense and I wanted to be out there to fight with my teammates.”
It was obvious over the initial five-game return that Brown was still feeling the effects of the hamstring strain. He would occasionally grab or flex the right leg, and he limped off the floor after a tough battle with the Sixers. Now, the team, says, things will be different.
“You can see that the burst is back,” Udoka said. “He’s stepped it up throughout the week, especially on that trip he ramped it up, and he feels good after workouts. That’s the main thing - how his body recovers, not having soreness or any tightness, as he did when he came back for the games.”
Most importantly, Brown says he’s 100%.
“I’m feeling good. I’m feeling like myself, like how I started the season,” he said. “Obviously it’s been difficult to watch, especially wanting to be out there seeing how our team’s been fighting for the most part. It’s been hard to watch, but coming back I’m looking to just add to winning, trying to get everybody on the same page, bring energy and make winning basketball plays.”
The next step for Brown is making sure this is the last of his hamstring issues. This is his third right hamstring issue, raising the concern level from simple injury or coincidence to trying to detect a pattern. Brown says that's led to a critical examination of his body’s mechanics and examining how he runs and trains.
“They got all that stuff listed in the weight room for me to work on different running motions, to make sure muscles are firing, to make sure I got strength in places that I need strength,” Brown said. “It is a combination of all of that. A lot of research, a lot of details going into it, so shout out to the guys that are putting that effort in and make sure that I'm getting back to being my full self.”
Udoka says Brown will likely be on some sort of minutes restriction but that it would be more about managing his fatigue level after two weeks off from NBA basketball and not really a concern over the hamstring. The goal is to keep him around 30 minutes, which isn’t too far off from his normal run. That will allow the team to get back to some level of continuity with a regular starting lineup.
“It’s 25 points you have to make up for basically, minus the continuity and what he brings to the team defensively,” Udoka said. “You’re relying on him to do so much just like we do with Jayson and some of our other guys - playmakers ... but him being on the court, the attention he draws, it gets everybody else open shots.”
Continuity is built through consistency and repetition, both of which have been in short supply with Brown out of the lineup for half the season. He hopes this time around will be different.
“I think just rest was the biggest difference,” he said. “I did all types of treatments and saw all types of doctors etc. And I think just over the course of time, the body just naturally healed itself at the pace it wanted to go at. I wish it was a little bit faster, or a lot a bit faster, but it wasn't. But moving forward in the right direction now. I'm grateful that my body is agreeing with me.”
NBA FACING LEAGUE-WIDE COVID ISSUES
Josh Richardson is in the league’s Health and Safety protocols, one of an increasing number of NBA players.
Zach LaVine is entering protocols, the ninth member of the Bulls now involved. It has even involved the Bulls broadcasters. The league has been hit hard by a wave of positive tests, decimating the Bulls and Charlotte Hornets in particular. The Knicks, Raptors, Wizards, and Celtics all also have at least one player in the protocols.
Udoka wouldn’t say if Richardson has been forced to hole up in Phoenix, but he’s expected to be out for a while. The team is hoping to avoid a major outbreak like Charlotte and Chicago.
“We addressed it with our team before the Phoenix game, how we have to tighten up,” Udoka said, adding he has not been told about a change in league policy at this point. “You see the increases in numbers and we just talked about tightening up everything with our team. When you have a situation, that brings attention to your team and league-wide as well. We just have to be more strict on our protocols, wear our masks and be diligent about our process.”
BACK TO BASICS
The Celtics flipped their identity out west to an offense-first mentality, and it cost them. They had the league’s fifth-best offense over the course of the trip, but the fourth-worst defense.
That's not going to fly with Udoka, who wants the team to get back to the little things they were doing earlier in the season.
“The slippage we had on the trip that got us from third place to 10th (defensively),” Udoka said. “Had some poor starts but fought our way back into most of those games and that’s when we started to guard. So having that sense of urgency and effort and attention to detail from the start of the game to not dig ourselves in that hole. So it was minor breakdowns that we haven’t had in quite a while.”
Udoka said it was a “long, long, long film session” that emphasized areas of concern.
“I think that comes down to details, and approach to the game,” Brown said. “We need everybody approaching the game with the right mentality, the right eagerness to win. There’s nothing fun about losing so we’ve got to continue to develop that mindset.”
The Celtics face the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday and then have three days off before a home back-to-back against Golden State and New York. Getting the defense back to its prior elite level will be very necessary to surviving that gauntlet.