Celtics star Jaylen Brown is considered “day to day” with Achilles tendonitis, according to head coach Joe Mazzulla.
Boston, which initially announced Brown’s injury as “left calf tightness,” downgraded him from questionable to out ahead of Friday night’s matchup with the Atlanta Hawks at TD Garden.
In his pregame news conference, Mazzulla would not say whether the injury could sideline Brown for multiple games.
“He’s day to day,” Mazzulla said. “He was in today, getting treatment. He’s day to day.”
Asked specifically about Brown’s return timeline, Mazzulla reiterated: “Day to day, yes. I think that’s the timeline.”
The Celtics coach said Brown “was just a little bit banged up after Wednesday’s game” — a 119-109 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in which Brown tallied 31 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, two steals and 12 free throws on 14 attempts.
Friday’s DNP ended a streak of 11 consecutive appearances for Brown, who’s scored at least 29 points in six of his last seven appearances. Of the eight games he’s missed this season, this was just the third that was not part of a back-to-back.
Brown has played his way into the NBA MVP conversation during the best season of his 10-year career, posting impressive numbers both before and after co-star Jayson Tatum’s return from Achilles surgery on March 6. The 29-year-old is on pace to become just the third player in Celtics history — along with Larry Bird and John Havlicek — and 17th player in NBA history to average at least 28 points, seven rebounds and five assists per game in a season.
The matchup with the Hawks — who entered Friday with a 14-1 record in their last 15 games — was the first game this season that Tatum played and Brown did not. The former logged a season-high 35 minutes against OKC, finishing with 19-12-7, three steals and one block.
Boston upgraded starters Neemias Queta (right thumb sprain) and Derrick White (right knee contusion) from questionable to available before Friday’s contest. Backup center Nikola Vucevic remained sidelined as he recovered from a fractured ring finger, from which he expects to return before the playoffs.
The Celtics face more playoff seeding uncertainty than they did at this point in either of the last two seasons. After being all but locked into the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds by mid-March in 2024 and 2025, respectively, they’re now in a tight race with the Knicks for second in the East. New York sat a game back of Boston entering Friday’s action, with Detroit holding a comfortable 4 1/2-game cushion atop the conference standings.
Mazzulla, who rested many of his starters down the stretch in ’24 and ’25, was asked how the playoff race would impact his roster management over the final 10 regular-season games.
“We’re just always going to do what gives us the best chance to win every single night, and I think that’s just how we have to do it regardless,” he said. “Even when it was (locked up), we still did what gave us the best chance to win. I think we just stay consistent in that.”
Resilience has been a strength of this Celtics team. Mazzulla’s squad has won games with 14 different starting lineups this season, and it entered Friday with a 6-1 record in games Brown missed, with all six wins coming by double digits.
“To me, by the time you get to the end of the season, you just want to have a main identity — a way that you play — but you also want to have different things that you can go to,” Mazzulla said. “And I think that’s something that we’ve been able to do throughout the season — some because of injuries and some because it’s important to be able to do that. We’ve played a little small, we’ve played double-big, we’ve played Neemi, we’ve played Luka (Garza), we’ve played Vuc. We’ve had Jayson-only, JB-only, neither one. (Different) start-of-the-second, start-of-the-fourth lineups.
“To me, it’s just how versatile can we be, but at the same time, keep the things that are the most important and keep our identity on the way we play?”