During an interview on NBC Sports Boston’s game broadcast Monday night, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens shared some previously unreported details about Kristaps Porzingis’ road back to the court.

Porzingis made his ahead-of-schedule season debut in Boston’s 126-94 win over the Clippers after missing the first 17 games. Most projections had him sitting out until at least December as he recovered from offseason leg surgery.

“I don’t think we realized (how quickly he’d be back) until we really got into camp, and then you started seeing him work,” Stevens explained. “Then when we saw him in Abu Dhabi, the way he was moving and the way that he felt, it was a pretty good indication that he was going to be at the front end of that timeline.”

The final steps of Porzingis’ rehab included one practice with the Celtics’ G League affiliate, during which he logged 32 minutes in a scrimmage setting, Stevens said. Stevens revealed the 7-foot-2 big man also took part in a scrimmage with the big club ahead of Boston’s game against the Washington Wizards last week.

He echoed head coach Joe Mazzulla in saying he knew for about a week that Porzingis would return to game action on Monday against LA.

“First of all, you have to re-ramp up,” Stevens said. “You have to go through every rehab step, then you also have to recondition to be able to play even a seven- or eight-minute stretch like he did (at the start of Monday’s game). That’s a pretty long a stretch for a guy first time back.

“But he’s been doing a lot. We assigned him to Maine last week. We actually brought the Maine team down to practice. So he played 32 minutes last Monday. He played 32 minutes again on Thursday in D.C. … in scrimmaging. And we knew he was going to be back (Monday) for the last week or so.”

Stevens also said Porzingis’ Game 1 performance against the Mavericks in last season’s NBA Finals “might be the most remarkable game off an injury that I’ve ever seen.”

He wasn’t quite as electric in his return to action Monday — at one point, Stevens said Porzingis “looked like a guy who hadn’t played in a while” — but still made an immediate impact on both ends of the floor, adding new elements to Boston’s offense while helping shore up the team’s flimsy rim protection.

Porzingis finished with 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting (1-for-6 from three), six rebounds, two assists, two blocks and one steal in 22 minutes. He said postgame that he has no new playing-time limitations, though Boston will continue to rest him during back-to-backs, as it did last season.

Some non-Porzingis-related nuggets from Stevens’ in-game interview:

On Pritchard and Sam Hauser, who hit a combined 9 of 13 threes against the Clippers: “Those guys come in firing regardless. That’s one of their many great attributes, certainly. At the top of every scouting report of every team we play has got to be those two guys shooting off the bench.”

His take how how the 15-3 Celtics have performed so far this season: “I don’t think we’ve really played at the level that we hopefully will play as we go on. We’ve had spurts of it. We see it game to game; we see it spurt to spurt. But we’ve got a few things we’ve got to clean up, for sure.”

His biggest area of concern: “Well, I think when you look at the difference in paint points on both ends. But I’m not as concerned about the offensive end, because as long as we’re getting good looks and we are searching for good looks, then that’s all that really matters there. But we’ve just got to do a better job of making it tough on the defensive end, especially in the paint.”

On Jeff Van Gundy, the Celtics consultant-turned-Clippers assistant, who received his NBA championship ring before Monday’s game: “It was super to have him around last year. He was everybody’s favorite, for sure. But we want to kick his ass, and he does ours. And he’s cool with that. That’s the way it goes.”