To say the least, it has been absolutely sickening the amount of not just players, but star players that have gone down due to injury this season. Kristaps Porzingis, Demarcus Cousins, Kawhi Leonard, Jeremy Lin, Jimmy Butler. These are just a few key players that have been out the majority of this season.

With possibly the most catastrophic injury of the season that happened in the NBA opener was Gordon Hayward. Hayward suffered a fractured tibia and dislocated ankle (left) just 5 minutes into the game that left the Quicken Loans arena in silence. There was talk about his injury immediately after coming from a retired surgeon, Bill Mallon, stating, “Depends on the degree of the soft tissue damage sustained concurrently. This fracture is usually not that hard to fix and that should do well.”

Hearing this from a well-known American surgeon, Celtics fans still had hope after that terrible injury Hayward could possibly return by the playoffs. That is if the Celtics were headed in the right direction and his recovery was going as expected.

Throughout the season Hayward has done well in keeping Celtics fans posted on how his recovering is coming along and seems that he has expressed strong interest in returning this season; posting videos to his Instagram, staying vocal with the media how he is doing and so forth. Brad Stevens, on the other hand, has been mysterious on giving information on the possible return. Giving statements beating around the bush, eluding that his progress on his return has been ‘great’ and that he is doing ‘very well in his recovery,’ things such as this. Stevens has now dropped the bomb, “He’s not playing this year.”

Stevens says it’s great to see Hayward’s progress after watching videos of him jumping, but added: “He’s still a super long way from even being in a 1-on-1 workout where he’s cutting.”
It seems that Stevens is trying to put an end to these questions to draw away from the distractions that may surround the team on this subject.

As far as the rest of the season goes for the Celtics, they have 17 regular season games left. It seems to be that the go-to starting lineup for the C’s is Irving, Tatum, Brown, Morris, and Horford. Given that Hayward won’t return this season, this seems to close the East competition more and more as the playoffs approach. Kyrie Irving will have more weight on his shoulders, which isn’t a bad thing as crunch time of the season is coming. With the ability to play as an MVP player this will give the Celtics someone to lean on why each and everyone else plays their role. Not to mention that the Celtics second rotation of guys is clicking very well as of now.

Heading into the last stretch of the regular season if the Celtics keep playing ball like they have throughout the year, they should get to the eastern conference finals and need to seriously be considered a team that may be playing in June.