BOSTON – Jaylen Brown’s recent eye issues led to him wearing goggles, then changing to a different pair, tossing those when they fogged up, only to come back to wearing contacts for Wednesday’s game against Denver.
“It was a big difference,” Brown said of not having to wear the goggles.
It certainly looked that way in his play, with Brown being among the many players on Wednesday to be in a really good rhythm shooting the ball.
And the timing could not have been any better as Boston outlasted the Denver Nuggets 124-118.
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Brown had 26 points – one shy of tying his career high – on 9-for-12 shooting.
Boston Celtics
As a team, Boston shot a season-high 59.5 percent from the field.
Ball movement, the sense of urgency to bounce back after a bad loss, trying to fill the void left by not having Al Horford (rest) around … there’s a number of reasons to help explain his impressive shooting night.
But none looms any larger than the fact that he was playing free of any limited vision issues that came up when he played with goggles.
“You take a lot of stuff for granted, and that’s one of them,” said Brown who did wear contacts during the game. “And when your vision is messed up and you try to play through it … I just appreciated being able to see.”
Brown explained the problems he experienced wearing the goggles.
“They were too much in my face,” he said. “I couldn’t see peripheral, and the other ones were just too tight, they kept fogging up. It was just uncomfortable with them, so I thought I was just better off without them. Tonight, I was blessed enough to be able to play with my contacts.”
And now that his vision is no longer an issue, Celtics head coach acknowledged how they can now joke around about the whole situation which began with Brown leaving his contacts in for too long which led to his right eye not being able to open and overall irritation that kept him sidelined for the Dallas game last week.
“We had some laughs in retro-spec,” quipped Stevens. “That’s pretty good; said retro-spec. Been thinking about that all week.”