Jaylen Brown unlikely to play in opener against 76ers

WALTHAM, Mass. — The Celtics are likely to be down yet another starter for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night at TD Garden as Jaylen Brown nurses a right hamstring injury suffered in the first half of Saturday’s Game 7 victory.

Yet, if any team is prepared to adjust to another dose of adversity, it’s a squad that’s played all but five minutes of the season without its marquee free-agent [...]

WALTHAM, Mass. — The Celtics are likely to be down yet another starter for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night at TD Garden as Jaylen Brown nurses a right hamstring injury suffered in the first half of Saturday’s Game 7 victory.

Yet, if any team is prepared to adjust to another dose of adversity, it’s a squad that’s played all but five minutes of the season without its marquee free-agent acquisition in Gordon Hayward, and the final month of the regular season and all of the playoffs without five-time All-Star Kyrie Irving.

“You'd definitely love to have the team that you started off training camp with,” Celtics center Aron Baynes said following Sunday’s film session. “But it's not going to happen. It rarely happens that you can do that. That's why we have been so good this year, because everyone understands you have to come in and fill a role.”

Celtics coach Brad Stevens said tests on what Brown described as a Grade 1 right hamstring strain following Saturday’s 112-96 clincher against the Milwaukee Bucks were promising. But Brown was still sore on Sunday and “doubtful” for Game 1 Monday night. The coach said “it looks like something that allows him to play as the series goes on.”

The Celtics will have to do what they did when they were down multiple starters virtually the entire regular season, and when they started the playoffs down four rotation players before Marcus Smart’s return from right thumb surgery for Game 5.

“We’ll miss Jaylen,” Baynes said. “He’s hard to make up for. But it’s about going out there and trying to collectively do it. We’re not going out and doing it by ourselves. That hasn’t worked when we’ve tried it throughout the season. It’s about going out there and doing it as a collective. [Stevens] will put us in the right spots to succeed.”

Philadelphia native Marcus Morris said that, despite all the injuries, he likes his own team’s chances to advance to the conference finals.

“I know it’s going to be a tough series,” Morris said. “I know everyone is amped up to play. They’ve had a lot of rest. I know they’re coming in feeling really energized. But they’ve still got to go through Boston.

“Offensively, I think we’ll be better in this series. We have the slight advantage with guys who can create and put it on the floor. They have a lot of shooters and Euro guys who pass, move and things like that. Offensively, I think we’ve got the advantage.”

The 76ers, who have been off since closing out the Miami Heat in five games on Tuesday, won their final 16 games of the regular season to surge into the No. 3 seed in the East. Emerging star center Joel Embiid and Rookie of the Year favorite point forward Ben Simmons lead a team that has supplemented their playmaking ability with shooters all over the court.

That will put pressure on the Celtics to play the way they mostly did at home in sweeping the four games on the parquet in the first round against the Bucks, without as many of the lulls that allowed Milwaukee to extend the series to seven games.

“I’ve learned that when we are really able to lock in as a group,” said Celtics All-Star Al Horford, “we can be as good as anyone. I think at times we got into trouble because we let our guard down or we weren’t doing things we needed to do. We just need to be more consistent as a group executing on offense and taking good shots.”

While it certainly hasn’t been the smoothest ride for this team all year, and it certainly hasn’t been how the Celtics mapped it out in training camp, it has been an exciting one punctuated with dramatic feats of resilience.

Now comes the toughest test so far as the Celtics look to keep the ride going at least a little while longer.

“I don’t think we’re focused on what we’ve come through,” Baynes said. “It’s more about what we have in front of us. We know with the group we have what we can accomplish. We showed glimpses of it toward the end of the season.

"We’re playing for something every time we step out on the court. Everyone has the ultimate trust in the guy next to him.”