We'll Officially See Gordon Hayward On Christmas

Is this good? Well I mean there's nothing really "good" about this situation but I suppose this is the best case scenario. It was never going to be 4 weeks, you knew that. You could have told me anything when this injury first happened and I would have believed you. I was looking at every Twitter doctor's diagnosis based off grainy Twitter videos and we heard everything form 4 weeks to 6 to 8 it went on and on. You could have told me he was most likely going to have to lose the finger and I would have believed it. My brain and heart were in a very sensitive place when this all went down. Couldn't even truly enjoy kicking the absolute shit out of the Spurs in their own building which never, ever, ever happens. But, now that we know the real timeline we can officially start our countdown and have some piece of mind.

I will say though, I'm a little apprehensive to truly believe this recovery timeline because it always feels like the news we get from the Celts is way better than the actual reality when it comes to injuries. They say 4-6 weeks and next thing you know it's been 2.5 months. Shit, Enes Kanter is finally back after missing the last 7 games with his injury which they told us wasn't that serious. If he truly is out until around Christmas, that means he's going to miss the following big time matchups

- DAL x2

- LAC

- BKN x2

- MIA

- DEN x2

- IND

- PHI

and he'd be back for Christmas against TOR. That would be basically 6 weeks from today. The Celts schedule isn't exactly a cakewalk from here until the new year so we'll really get a sense of what they are by the time Hayward comes back. A return on Christmas would have him out for 19 games and right now at least 10 of them are against teams you expect to make the playoffs. They go something like 13-6 over that stretch and I'll consider that a gigantic win.