Boston Celtics assistant coach Jamie Young to run Boston Marathon

Jamie Young is from Indiana and attended college in Illinois, but he’s definitely a Massachusetts guy now.

Young is in his 13th season with the Boston Celtics, lasting through the Jim O’Brien and Doc Rivers regimes and surviving into the Brad Stevens era. He’s held a variety of roles and is now an assistant coach.

Like anyone in the area, he was shook by last year’s Boston Marathon bombings. Baxter Holmes of The Boston Globe:

On that April Monday last year, Young stepped off the treadmill at the Celtics’ practice facility in Waltham and hurried to check in with his colleagues.

Young was concerned, because he knew that Doc Rivers, then the Celtics coach, and forward Jeff Green were both living in downtown Boston.

Rivers and Green obviously ended up OK, but like so many in and around Boston, Young still wanted to do something. That will show this year, when the race will surely be the biggest in the event’s history. And it will included Young. Holmes:

On the one-year anniversary of the bombing this April, Young plans to again go for a run, only this time in the Boston Marathon. It would be his first marathon of any kind.

The Boston Marathon is scheduled for April 21, which is in the midst of the first round of the NBA playoffs. The Celtics’ season will likely be over at that point –

they have just a 23.9 chance of reaching the postseason, according to ESPN’s formula – but that hardly means they’re out of it. Boston is just 2.5 games back of the eighth seed and Rajon Rondo returning soon could provide a lift.

What if the Celtics have a playoff game the day of the marathon?

Obviously, there are a lot of to-be-determined factors that would influence whether Young could run the marathon and then coach that night, but it at least seems possible. Vince Carter famously received his diploma the day of the Raptors’ Game 7 against the 76ers in the 2001 second round.

It’s great Young plans to run, period. But I’m rooting for him to run the race and then get an ovation when introduced before the Celtics’ game that night. How cool would that be?