Jaden Springer makes Celtics debut in Bulls win following surprising trade.

Jaden Springer made his Celtics debut on Thursday night after missing his first week of action with his new team due to an ankle ailment. Springer received two minutes of action during the fourth quarter of the Celtics’ 129-112 victory over the Bulls, missing his lone 3-point attempt in the triumph. He had been struggling with a right ankle impingement experienced during his final game in Philadelphia before the move.

“Really just about getting my foot back right,” Springer told reporters Thursday regarding his recovery process. “Get comfortable playing, getting up and down the court. Played a little bit. That’s about it. Everything was feeling terrific.

The Celtics gave up a second round selection for Springer in the seconds before the trade deadline, allowing Boston to get the 6-foot-4 guard from the division rival 76ers. Springer compared his former team’s system under Nick Nurse to his new club.

“I feel like there’s more read and react,” Springer added. “You going out there playing based off each other, playing based off your teammates. So you’re just reading what everybody else is doing. It’s not really a set, ‘we have to do this, we have to do that.’ So just going out there and hooping and playing basketball.”

Springer earned some huge minutes in Philadelphia as the club dealt with major injury difficulties but he will have a longer wait for meaningful chances in Boston with the squad fully healthy and established on the wing. However, Springer’s experience matching up defensively against some great offensive talent in Luka Doncic and Stephen Curry with the Sixers in recent weeks was instructive for the 21-year-old.

“I mean, yeah, being able to play to play against those guys, that was pretty cool,” Springer said. “Being able to have that matchup. Being able to come here, it was fantastic. That was all fantastic news for me. I’m feeling good.”

Springer will certainly have some added motivation with his new team after a frank appraisal of his talent from his former GM Daryl Morey in Philadelphia.

“We had to look at, what are the odds Jaden Springer — who I think has a great future — helps our playoff rotation in the one, two, three-year horizon,” Morey said after the trade deadline, via Sam DiGiovanni. “And what are the odds a second-round pick helps us? And we thought the second-round pick helped us more. And that’s simply the fact, it allows us to maybe obtain a veteran at next year’s deadline, stuff like that.

“We did it. It sucks. Jaden’s going to be extremely excellent, I think. I think his timeframe is a little pushed out, too. Our view was that his timetable to aid a playoff team is longer than what the second-round pick can achieve for us.”

That judgment stands in contrast to how the Celtics and Brad Stevens regard the former first round choice, with high aspirations for his development in the present and the future.

“We’ve tracked his development pretty closely over the years,” Brad Stevens said earlier this month. “We liked him in the draft a few years ago. He’s still a puppy. … So we were immediately thinking, ‘Woah, that looks like strides.’ The second thing that anybody that is obsessed like us watches all the G-League things. He was outstanding in the G-League playoffs last year. He’s done a lot of excellent things against us when he’s been up in Maine. We’ve seen him live multiple times up there. He’s a man we’ve been tracking for a while.”

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