BOSTON — Marcus Morris wants his Christmas family reunion with his twin brother, Markieff, to take place on the court instead of with him on the sideline.
The Celtics forward said his hopes for that have increased in recent days as his sore knee has improved from a week of rest after he aggravated an injury that has irritated him to varying degrees since the beginning of the season.
“Really hoping to play Christmas [against the Washington Wizards],” he said before Friday night’s game against the Utah Jazz. “Maybe a game before that just to get warmed to it. I will probably be on limited minutes.”
Morris said he still doesn't know the source of the pain, which began shortly after he arrived at training camp upon being found not guilty in his assault trial in Arizona. He said it was almost pain-free when he sustained a bruise that forced him out of the lineup.
“I caught a lob in that Phoenix game [on Dec. 2],” he said. “That was the first lob I caught all season. So you know I was feeling really good. Then once I got hit it kind of aggravated my knee to the point where in the San Antonio game [last Friday] and the game before that [Milwaukee on Dec. 4] I was about 60 percent.
“It was really, really bothering me. Mentally, I had to sit out. I could have played but I didn’t think it would be beneficial to the team.”
Morris sat out the Dallas game on Dec. 6, played 25 minutes against the Spurs, and Friday night missed his third straight game. Celtics coach Brad Stevens said Morris will not travel with the team for the two-game road trip beginning Saturday night in Memphis.
“The biggest thing is just feeling better consistently day-to-day and not having setbacks,” Stevens said. “With the schedule we have now, playing every day would not be the answer. It’s getting him to feel as good as he can. He’s had a couple of different opinions. Everybody, from what I know, has come up with the same result. That is to strengthen it, work diligently on it, and it shouldn’t be a long-term thing.”
Morris said he’s had two opinions on the knee and both have been “mostly” the same: Surgery is not necessary and it should improve with rest and conditioning.
He added that the goal is to have it be healthy for rest of the season and not risk that by trying to play through pain during this busy stretch of games.
“Looking at the schedule for the rest of this month, it’s really brutal,” he said. “We’re just looking at trying to take it easier the rest of this month and get it good to go for the rest of the time. We go to London [Jan. 11]. But we’ve got six [non-travel] days off [around that]. The rest of the months aren’t as hard. We are trying to base it around that.”
Horford returns
Al Horford was back in the lineup, as expected, after taking Wednesday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets off for “rest” purposes. … As the Celtics welcomed back Jonas Jerebko with the Jazz Friday night, Stevens recalled the day when the team transitioned from a rebuilding squad to one prepared to make an unlikely playoff push at the 2015 trade deadline. “Jonas came in the same day as Isaiah [Thomas],” Stevens said. “Them and Gigi Datome were all traded on that day." While Jerebko was not always in the rotation, he was during key times of three Boston playoff runs. “He had that great playoff series against Atlanta [two years ago] when he became a starter for us,” the coach said.