After the Celtics’ tough loss in Madison Square Garden on Friday night, the Knicks are still alive for the two seed. They’re two games back of the Celtics, with each team having two games left to play, but since New York has the tiebreaker, the Cs still need a win or a Knicks loss to clinch the second seed in the East, and homecourt advantage until the Conference Finals.
Boston’s final two games are against the Pelicans and Magic. New Orleans is completely eliminated and has nothing to play for, but the Magic may need the win on Sunday for seeding in the East play-in race.
But the Pelicans don’t have their own first-round pick, so while they are well outside the playoff picture, they haven’t been tanking and have actually been a pretty competitive team for the past couple of months.
Pelicans resting majority of starters
Luckily for the Celtics, it seems like the Pels are throwing them a bone on Friday night, as they’ve already ruled out Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones, Saddiq Bey, Dejounte Murray, and Yves Missi.
New Orleans has showed their fans and ownership some stuff recently, and the coaches and players have done their best to prove they deserve another shot with a fresh start next season. Whether they’ve done enough to convince the bosses or not is another story, but they at least appear ready to rest on their laurels Friday night in Boston.
That means it’ll be a skeleton crew of backups and rookies for the Pels on Friday night. Hopefully, they have one eye on Cancun, and this will be a walk in the park for the Cs to notch a win and lock up the two seed.
Celtics injury report still in flux
The Celtics won’t have their full cast on Friday night either, after a tough loss in New York on Thursday night. Jayson Tatum will be sitting out the second half of the back-to-back.
Jaylen Brown sat out on Thursday night, and he’s questionable for Friday with the achilles tendinitis that caused him to miss a couple of games last week. It’s probably nothing serious, but it’s not a bad idea to get him some extra rest, if needed.
Sam Hauser, Neemias Queta, and Derrick White are all probable after being listed as questionable on Thursday before ultimately playing. In a perfect world, the Celtics would have most of their rotation ready to go, they’d get out to a good lead, and wrap up the two seed on a high note, allowing everyone to get plenty of rest before the playoffs begin.