BOSTON — Jaylen Brown went through his pregame routine before officially confirming he could play Wednesday against the 76ers. He was originally listed as questionable on the injury report with a left hamstring strain he suffered last week facing the Raptors.
Brown played a solid game as he poured in 25 points in the season-opening 117-116 loss to the Sixers on Wednesday at TD Garden. He eased himself into the game as he picked up assists before he did the bulk of his damage in the fourth quarter, scoring 12 points. Still, it sounds like the hamstring injury is something Brown will need to manage going forward.
“It was fine,” Brown said. “I thought it held up well. Definitely gotta do some recovery. Within the first two weeks coming back from a strain, you’ve gotta make sure that you get your recovery in because that’s when the risk is at its highest. So I just gotta make sure I’m focusing on my body, getting my rest, doing my recovery and getting ready for the next game.”
Brown didn’t look limited Wednesday through the early portions of the game. The Celtics threw an interesting wrinkle against former MVP Joel Embiid as Brown matched up against him on multiple possessions. Embiid himself didn’t look healthy, settling for jumpers and not attacking the post physically as he’s done in previous seasons.
The Celtics leaned on Brown throughout crunch-time as he finished 9-for-18 from the field overall. There were some misses mixed in as the Celtics fell short in the final few seconds to the Sixers. On the C’s final possession, they drew up a play that was supposed to go to Brown. But the Sixers played it well, so Payton Pritchard ended up with the ball. The C’s ultimately had a couple chances to win it, but they couldn’t get one final bucket.
That’ll be a process for the Celtics going forward when it comes to closing out a close game. With Jayson Tatum sidelined, who gets the final shot will often fall on Brown or someone else. With the game slowing down in the fourth quarter, it’ll be up to the Celtics to ease those transitions as they play without their superstar in Tatum.
Regardless, it was a solid outing for Brown coming off the injury. He was a full go at Celtics practice Tuesday, so it was likely that he would play Wednesday. The Celtics have another tough foe as they face the Knicks in New York City on Friday as they embark on a three-game road trip.
“That’s the tough part: You want to keep that pace that you had for 45 minutes, but you’ve also got to execute and know those possessions are valuable,” Brown said. “So just try to get pace into the set. I think a couple possessions, we were kind of looking to see what we were trying to do. But that will just come with more reps of what we’re trying to do, how we want to execute on this possession, and the pace to get into it definitely gives us more options for multiple actions.”
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