Whatever your lasting impression of this iteration of the Boston Celtics is, their health and availability has to come to mind.
Monday’s news about Jaylen Brown’s season-ending surgery cemented that.
Amid a career year, evaluation revealed a torn scapholunate ligament in his left wrist that Brown had been playing through, among other ailments.
With that, the Celtics’ odds to make a deep run plummeted, and it became official: never once during the 2020-21 season did Boston have all of its players available.
“We’ve had the injuries and COVID-19 all the way through, we just had hope that at the end we would be full,” coach Brad Stevens said, with a chuckle, ahead of Tuesday’s matchup with the Miami Heat.
“That was taken away this weekend. And so, you know, now it is truly time to look at it and say, ‘Ok, this is how we think we’d have to do it to have our best chance. And I like the guys in the room, there’s gonna be a lot more required of the best players, and you know, that’s the challenge they’re going to have to step up to.”
Collectively, members of the Celtics have missed 183 games to this point. With Robert Williams out at least Tuesday against the Heat, and Brown done for the rest of the year, that makes 188 games.
And at no point during the season has Boston had its top seven players available all at once — whether that included Daniel Theis before the trade deadline or Evan Fournier after it.
Brad Stevens is bracing for what’s to come with a lot of optimism, though.
“We’ve been here before, some of our best players aren’t available, and you head into the postseason,” Stevens reminded. “We’ll see where we land and we’ll see what happens, but we have enough in the room to be a nuisance.”
