Celtics

Jaylen Brown ‘day-to-day’ after feeling tightness in his hamstring again

Brown missed eight games in November due to the injury and will miss Friday's game against the Jazz.

Jaylen Brown is out again due to a hamstring injury.

December 3, 2021

Just 11 days after returning from an eight-game absence due to a hamstring injury, Jaylen Brown is inactive again due to the same injury.

The star wing won’t play in Friday’s game against the Jazz as the Celtics have ruled him out due to tightness in his hamstring. Brown will be “day-to-day” going forward as he deals with the injury, Celtics coach Ime Udoka told reporters Friday.

“We’ve increased his minutes and he’s felt good at times, better, and then he had a setback so we’re being cautious there,” Udoka said. “He’ll get some rest and we’ll reevaluate him tomorrow.”

Brown played in all five games after returning from the injury, but he was on a minutes restriction. Wednesday’s game against the 76ers saw Brown play his most minutes since returning (33). But Brown appeared to grimace throughout Wednesday’s game. He grimaced again after the Celtics made the game-sealing stop at the buzzer to win 88-87.

“He just got tight,” Udoka said of how Brown looked on Wednesday. “He may have tweaked an ankle, hamstring, the achilles, something late in the game. May have shown him hobbling more because of that. But this is a thing we’ll have to monitor when he comes back, he missed quite a few games. We’ll just see how his body feels with the increase in minutes.”

Despite Brown missing time again due to injury, Udoka is second-guessing the rehab process Brown went through last time – noting that the Celtics held him out of games against the Hawks and Lakers despite his willingness to play.

“There was going to be some natural soreness if you haven’t played for weeks or games, and it’s hard to emulate a real-time NBA game in workout and rehab,” Udoka said. “So as long as he felt good the next day, some soreness is natural. Tightness is going to be natural at times. And if you feel a little bit more after the game, that’s when we’ll start to take a deeper look at it and that’s what we did after the last game.”

While the Celtics might be without their second-leading scorer for some time, they didn’t fare too badly without him in November. They went 5-3 during Brown’s eight-game absence with two of the losses being decided in the final minute.

Friday kicks off the Celtics’ five-game West Coast trip in which they’ll play five teams who made the playoffs last season. They play the Trail Blazers on Saturday, the Lakers on Tuesday, the Clippers on Wednesday, and the Suns on Dec. 10.