Danny Ainge says Kyrie Irving will have to manage his knee soreness for the rest of his career ahead of his presumptive return for the Boston Celtics against the Minnesota Timberwolves Thursday.

Kyrie Irving broke his knee in the first game of his first NBA Finals in 2015. Everyone saw that.

What most don’t see is the ongoing maintenance, soreness and recovery that comes with such an injury. For Irving, it requires him to miss a game every now and then to make sure the soreness does not evolve into something more. IT meant sitting out Monday’s Celtics win over the Chicago Bulls, a beatdown so bad that the NBA told the Bulls to stop tanking.

But while the Celtics got by without Irving just fine against one of the league’s bottom dwellers, they know they won’t be afforded such luxuries in playoffs. As the team gets ready to climb the Springtime Basketball Himalayas, Irving’s management of the soreness that has popped up in playoffs past will be crucial.

In an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Toucher and Rich, Danny Ainge reiterated something Irving said earlier this week: Irving will be managing this for the rest of his career.

“I think that it’s something that he’ll have to manage the rest of his career,” Ainge said Thursday morning. “I don’t think it’s anything serious, but we want Kyrie healthy and fresh. He carries a heavy burden the offensive load that he carries. So we’re okay with him missing some games.”

Boston continues to be proactive in addressing soreness this year, especially in light of the Isaiah Thomas injury last year. They have a new training staff led by athletic trainer Art Horne and have had multiple cases of lingering soreness for Marcus Morris and Shane Larkin. Morris and Larkin both tried to play off and on through soreness, but were eventually shut down for a month. The process worked, with Morris finally playing at a high level and Larkin now making his way back to his previous level.

Their depth is there as a saety net for when Kyrie needs a break, something they came into the year expecting.

“We feel like we have a deep roster and we need him to be healthy and fresh and we knew going into the year that he would not play 82 games in the regular season, so this is just a maintenance type of thing,” Ainge said. “And Kyrie knows his body better than anybody. So him, along with our training staff together, they make those decisions that are best for Kyrie and for the team in the long run.”

This experience for Kyrie has been crucial in helping him learn a long-term maintenance routine and passing that knowledge on to the rest of the locker room.

“I had to actually go through an injury, a significant injury — my fractured kneecap — to really understand how important it is and how vital it is to really maintain the shape of your body,” Irving told reporters in Minnesota Wednesday, per Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe. “It’s a lifestyle you have to adopt.”

Before he sat out the game Monday, he went into detail explaining the situation. In January, Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com reported Irving would eventually need a clean-up procedure on the knee, something Vardon reported he used as a chip to force his way out of Cleveland. Irving’s response was that it, “sounds like a HIPAA violation.”

“Just been about two years coming off knee surgery,” he told reporters in Chicago Monday. “So just you have to do things like that and just stay on top of it and make sure that you’re doing the right thing, sometimes it may be a little bit extra, just from the demand you put on your body, and then also the realization of how much basketball you’ve actually been playing for the last few years, and the level which you demand your body to play at.

“It’s part of the game. I think that’s part of the luxury of being in the regular season and having times where you can kind of put yourself first and just take care of yourself and then go from there.”

Irving plans to return Thursday against the Wolves, in what will be Derrick Rose’s first game in Minnesota since signing Thursday morning. Irving will see the consequences of a knee gone wrong, with Rose’s multitude of tears taking who was once the youngest MVP in NBA history and turning his story into a devastating one. Irving does not want to fall into that trap, as his career is somehow just beginning to blossom.

He’ll hafve to learn from the past of his and others to navigate those treacherous waters safely and soundly.