The Injured Reserve List

Shank takes note of Boston Celtic forward Jaylen Brown's lack of a green thumb:

When Jaylen Brown evokes anecdotes about Vaughn Eshelman and Irving Fryar, it is not a good sign

The Celtics start their playoff run this week, and we expect them to push past Miami or Atlanta in the first round. Celtic Nation hopes All-Star Jaylen Brown returns after missing the last two games of the regular season after suffering a five-stitch cut on his right hand.

“I was watering my plant and ended up knocking over a glass vase that was next to it,” Brown said Friday. “Picked it up, set it on the ground, realized you probably shouldn’t set glass on the ground. Reached down and picked it back up, and it got me.”

There’s certainly a possibility that this is true. But fact or fiction, Brown’s mysterious cut joins a long list of domestic and recreational mishaps that have sidelined Boston athletes over the years.

Some were more serious than others. Some were barely worth mentioning. But all became part of local sports folklore.

Where do we even start?

You can start right from there, and it's a real good column, until it gets to this point:

In that same decade, Larry Bird showed up with a bruised hand in the middle of the 1985 Eastern Conference final series with the Philadelphia 76ers. Bird claimed the swollen hand was the result of a game injury, but we couldn’t find game footage of any unusual moment, and it turned out that Larry’s busted hand came in a bar altercation with a former Colgate football player.

Bird didn’t miss any games, and the Celtics advanced to the Finals, but lost to the Lakers in six. The injury may have been costly. Bird shot 52.2 percent during his 1984-85 MVP season, but only 43.5 percent in the nine playoff games after the fight. He missed 17 shots in the elimination loss to the Lakers at the Garden.

Left out of that tidbit - Shank was the first reporter who disclosed the bar fight angle, after which Bird didn't speak to him for about six months.