Boston Celtics starting center Kristaps Porzingis made a surprising early return from his offseason leg surgery in a 126-94 massacre against the LA Clippers on Monday.

During an interview with NBC Sports Boston (as transcribed by Zach Cox of The Boston Herald), Celtics team president Brad Stevens explained that he too was surprised at how quickly the veteran big man was able to return to the hardwood. All told, he only missed the first seventeen games of the season for the Celtics.

Boston survived – and thrived – without their big-playing superstar. The 38-year-old former five-time All-Star Al Horford came in for Porzingis for fourteen games, but was left out due to an illness. He averaged 10.1 points on .495/.446/1.000 shooting splits, 5.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 0.9 steals and 0.9 blocks while starting for Porzingis. Boston won 14-3, without Porzingis.

“I don’t think we realized (how quickly he would be back) until we actually got into camp, and then you started seeing him work,” Stevens said. “Then when we saw him in Abu Dhabi, the way he moved and the way he felt, that was a pretty good indication that he would be at the front end of that timeline.”

In his first game of the season, the 7-foot-2 former All-Star scored 16 points on 6-for-12 shooting from the field (1-for-6 from long range) and 3-for-4 shooting from the charity stripe, grabbed six rebounds, blocked two shots, dished out a pair of dimes and picked up one steal.

“First of all, you have to pick up the pace again,” Stevens said of Porzingis’ recovery. “You have to go through every step of rehabilitation, and then you also have to recondition to be able to play even a seven- or eight-minute stretch like he did (at the start of Monday’s game). That’s quite a long journey for someone who is back for the first time.”

In anticipation of a comeback, Porzingis was given some practice reps last week with Boston’s G League affiliate, the Maine Celtics.

‘But he’s done a lot. We assigned him to Maine last week,” Stevens said. We actually took the Maine team to practice. So he played 32 minutes last Monday. He played 32 minutes again on Thursday in DC… in scrimmaging. And we knew that he would. come back (Monday) for the last week or so.”

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