After injury-riddled rookie season with Celtics, Romeo Langford to return vs. Pacers

INDIANAPOLIS – Romeo Langford will always have a special relationship with Bankers Life Fieldhouse. It’s where he won his lone state title during four dominant years playing for New Albany High School and where IU basketball fans got to see his final performance before a back injury kept him out of last spring’s NIT run.

Wednesday, it could be the location of the Boston Celtics rookie’s first meaningful minutes as an NBA player.

A litany of injuries has hampered Langford since he was drafted with the 14th-overall pick in this summer’s NBA Draft – most recently an ankle injury suffered in the fourth quarter of a Dec. 1 game for Boston’s G League team, the Maine Red Claws. Wednesday before the team’s shoot-around, he and coach Brad Stevens confirmed that Langford should be active for this evening’s matchup with the Pacers.

“I’m good now, I’m ready to play,” he said. “And there’s a lot of memories (for me) when you come here. It’s nice to be back on familiar ground and nice to be able to have a lot of people that grew up watching me come back and see me.”

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Whether he’ll take the court is an entirely different story with a Celtics roster that runs so deep. Boston guard Marcus Smart is questionable to play and spent the morning shoot-around back at the team hotel battling a left eye infection. His absence would take away one player in front of Langford in the rotation.

Stevens said Langford looked solid in an on-court workout he completed with a couple of teammates and Celtics staff Monday before the team’s home game against Cleveland.

“He looks like he’s cleared and ready to go. He’ll be available is what I’m being told,” Stevens said.

The return to Indianapolis is a tough one, Stevens said in reference to the number of Hoosier connections involved. The former Butler basketball coach said he enjoyed being able to watch the Bulldogs battle in a close loss on the road at Baylor on Tuesday night in his hotel room. But there’s never enough time to meet with as many old friends and family as he’d like – especially with Boston’s second leg of a back-to-back on Thursday at home against Philadelphia. Life as a former Indiana college basketball star – like Langford, Butler’s Gordon Hayward and Carsen Edwards, a rookie from Purdue – is no different.

“It’s good to drive down the street and come in this building,” Stevens said of the Pacers arena. “It’s good to be back, and I’m sure for those guys, it’s the same. But I told Romeo and Carsen, ‘Make sure you get out of the ticket business because that can get expensive.'”

Langford said his personal list of close friends and family whom he helped get tickets was short this time around. Though there’s bound to be a flood of the rookie’s supporters from New Albany, Bloomington and other reaches of the state – particularly after he endeared himself to even the most casual basketball fan by signing autographs after his high school games, sometimes for more than an hour.

“I know my high school and my city, they bought a lot of tickets, so there should be a lot of people here,” Langford said.

Though he hasn't played much, Langford said he’s been able to use these past several months to ease into life as an NBA player. After the draft, he was held out of Summer League play for the Celtics while recovering from surgery on a thumb injury he played with the bulk of his lone season at IU. A groin injury cost him more action in the preseason, and a slip on a wet spot during a preseason blowout of the Cavaliers on Oct. 13 further set him back.

He appeared in the closing seconds of Boston’s regular season win Oct. 30 against Milwaukee before he was shipped off to Portland, Maine, with the Red Claws, where he notched 27 points on 10-of-15 shooting in the team’s Nov. 9 season-opener. But seven minutes into his team’s home-opener against the Fort Wayne Mad Ants on Nov. 15, he suffered his first of two right ankle injuries in the past month – the second of which came in his return to the Red Claws Dec. 1.

Still, Langford believes once he's healthy he won’t have a problem playing at the NBA level and proving his original hype as a high-lottery pick before his up-and-down season at IU that ended with multiple injury concerns.

“It is hard, coming back once you get hurt, but you’ve just got to keep pushing,” he said. “It’s a long season, and I have a long career ahead, so it’s not that bad.

“This is a job now. It’s everything you’ve got, to come in everyday and put that work in. But it’s fun, just having to play basketball and not have to work on anything else.”