Gordon Hayward has been out for the Boston Celtics since the season opener vs the Cleveland Cavaliers after he picked up an ankle injury during the game due to a hard fall.

Hayward suffered a fractured tibia and dislocated ankle in his left leg less than six minutes into the game, and was ruled out for the entire season after undergoing surgery.

The forward is now focused on being able to return to the court for the Celtics in time for their opening game of the 2018-19 season later this year. At one point, he did suffer a setback in his rehab.

Pain

Hayward explained on his website the events that led to him another surgery.

The Celtics star said: "I had been progressing really well. I had been doing cuts laterally. I was jumping. I hadn’t done anything that explosive and I wasn’t quite 100 percent with any of it, but I was slowly building up to that.

"Problem was, I was also still having some pain on the outside of my ankle, kind of where the peroneal tendon is.

"I had been reporting back daily how I was feeling, and the team that I was working with in Indianapolis—along with the Celtics training staff—had surmised that it could be the hardware they put in during my initial surgery causing some irritation."

Hayward continued: "So I called up Dr. Porter, who collaborated on my surgery and who’s advised us throughout this process, just to ask what he thought.

"I explained to him what was going on, and he said it could be a couple different things, so we should do a test to figure out what it is.

"He told me that it could just be that my muscles were sore, and it was a strength issue, and I just needed to continue to rehab and have it get stronger, and eventually, it would go away. Or it could be something different."

Surgery

After a visit with Dr. Porter, it was determined that his pain was holding back his rehabilitation on his ankle, so he had surgery done to sort it out. 

He said: "They said the surgery went really well, and now I just have to let the incision (and my soft tissue in the places where they went in) recover properly.

"But that is a really easy recovery. And in probably four to six weeks I will be right back to the point where I was before I got the surgery, except for I won’t have that same pain."

Now that he's back on the recovery path, Hayward hopes to return to playing full-court, five-on-five basketball by the end of next month.

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