The Boston Celtics took on the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night, but the matchup highlighted a couple of weird rotations. Jakob Poeltl was out for the Raptors, and Al Horford and Luke Kornet were ruled out well before the game began. It was already set up to be a short-handed affair at the center position, but then Kristaps Porzingis was put on the injury report.
Moments before the game started, the Celtics added Porzingis to the injury report due to a non-covid illness. He was originally listed as doubtful, but by halftime, he was officially ruled out, leaving the Celtics with only Neemias Queta and Xavier Tillman at the center spot.
After the game Joe Mazzulla explained what happened.
Joe Mazzulla provides Kristaps Porzingis update after late scratch
Mazzulla revealed that Porzingis wasn’t feeling well before the start of the game, and, as a team, they decided to hold him out because it was the first leg of a back-to-back.
“He wasn’t feeling well and at the same time we wanted to make sure that we’ll have him for tomorrow,” Mazzulla said via Brian Robb of MassLive. “We kind of all made that decision together, just kind of as a team, that, it’d be best if you if it’s that we make sure we guarantee to have him tomorrow.”
The Celtics play the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night, so ensuring that they would have Porzingis and (probably) Al Horford was clearly a priority for Boston.
The Pistons are a bonafide playoff team this year, while the Raptors are floating around the abyss at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
From the sound of it, Porzingis will be just fine moving forward, and the decision to hold him out against the Raptors was founded purely in the desire to get him ready for Wednesday night.
In his absence, Mazzulla decided to go with a non-traditional starting five. Instead of sliding Queta into the starting unit, Mazzulla went with Torrey Craig, who was technically listed as the center in the box score.
By the end of the game, the Celtics were running a bunch of lineups without either of those guys, but they still managed to get the job done with a 111-101 win.
Regardless, Porzingis’ late scratch likely threw an ounce of fear into the hearts of Celtics fans, as he’s been fairly injury-prone all season. Even if he was just listed with an illness, it’s still never good to see him yanked from the lineup like that.
But despite that, it seems like Porzingis will be ready to roll in Detroit.