Brad Stevens provides update on Jaylen Brown's knee injury
The Boston Celtics will be monitoring a number of injured players this offseason, and you can add Jaylen Brown to the list. The Boston swingman played through a partially torn meniscus during the team's postseason run, which could require surgery this summer.
Celtics president of basketballs ops. Brad Stevens touched on a number of topics Monday in his end-of-season press conference, and praised Brown for playing through the ailment.
"Jaylen wants to play," Stevens said. "Jaylen's a warriors, Jaylen takes great pride in being out there."
Brown has been dealing with the injury since March. It caused him to miss a stretch of games toward the end of the season, but he suited up in all 11 of Boston's postseason games against the Orlando Magic and New York Knicks. He lacked his usual explosiveness but still managed to average 22.1 points off 44 percent shooting to go along with 7.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. Brown had his best game of the postseason right after Jayson Tatum was lost to a rupture Achilles, when he dropped 26 points and dished out a career-high 12 assists in a blowout win over the Knicks in Game 5 at TD Garden, which forced a Game 6 back in New York.
The Celtics lost Game 6 to drop the series, and now head into an offseason of unknown. The unknown includes Brown and whether or not he'll need surgery this summer.
Will Jaylen Brown require offseason surgery?
Brown will be reevaluated in the coming days to determine if he'll need surgery. Stevens sounded somewhat hopeful Brown would be able to avoid going under the knife, but said the decision will be made by Brown and his camp.
"He saw obviously our team docs and a couple of other people, and as he even said a couple weeks ago, the knee is in a good place structurally," Stevens explained. "And so I think he felt comfortable getting out there and going after it. And hopefully he'll feel better after being off it for a couple weeks here.
"The unfortunate part is we're done in the middle of May, but some of these guys who have some nicks, bruises and other things that it'll be good to get some rest," added Stevens.
Brown has already undergone several scans on the knee, and Stevens said last year's NBA Finals MVP showed his true mentality by playing through the injury.
"We've known that for a long time, and he's known that for a long time. But it just tells you, these guys care. They care about winning, they care about playing, they care about playing well." said Stevens. "Certainly we're thankful for how much and how hard he's played, but he was definitely experiencing some discomfort there in March. But you guys all watched it in the last couple of weeks, I thought it got better and better and better, and I think he actually felt better or at least he told me he felt better at the end of the Knicks series."
With Tatum likely set to miss the entire 2025-26 season, the Celtics are hoping for some good news on Brown and his knee injury.
