Brad Stevens Hints At Length Of Kemba Walker’s Minutes Restriction

For the first time all season, the Boston Celtics will have their core four players including Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart available on the same night.

That solves some of coach Brad Stevens’s problems now, as some of his lineups certainly got interesting while Boston was without either Walker, Tatum, Brown or all of the above during recent weeks.

Still, even with the best four Celtics all available, Stevens noted Wednesday in his pregame media availability that he won’t truly know what he has until Walker is off his minutes restriction.

“Probably the main guys that you’re asking about, like the guys that are going to play a majority of the minutes, I mean yeah, I know pretty much exactly what we want to do. That’s the easy part,” Stevens said in San Antonio before the Celtics tipped off against the Spurs.

“The other part is who compliments those guys and I’d say it’s still not set in stone by any means with this group — it just isn’t. We’ve had some good moments, each guy, we’ve been fairly inconsistent at times, but I think we’ll see how that goes as we continue to play more.”

And again, it’s still unclear when the team’s starting point guard will be unleashed from the minutes restriction he’s anticipated to be on as he eases his knee back into the season.

“Kemba will be limited, you know, for the next few weeks. He’s not going to hit the 30-minute mark any time soon,” Stevens said. “So I think we’re not going to know for sure for sure until we get to that point as far as rotations go, otherwise, it’s about who compliments those guys the best.”

That process begins as the Celtics and Spurs get going at 8:30 p.m. ET.