CELTICS HAVE OWN ISSUES

BOSTON — Watching the Boston Celtics run roughshod over the Raptors in the final minutes of Saturday’s game, it was easy to forget this team has issues of its own to deal with before the playoffs start.

With Kyrie Irving, Marcus Smart, Daniel Theis and of course Gordon Hayward out, the Celtics are making do with less for the time being. And yes, they are winning despite all the injuries with five in a row heading into Tuesday’s tilt in Milwaukee but the shortened roster and the changing faces are having an impact.

Even the normally scripted practice of resting players in advance of a playoff run is more or less off the table for the Celtics at this point because of their injury situation.

“We’re going to have to do that because of our available bodies, we’re going to approach each game the exact same way, but we’re inevitably going to have to do that for the next seven games, regardless,” Stevens said.

Even the way they approach a game in terms of style and how they play has been dictated by the everychanging bodies.

“It’s funny because our G-League staff is back with us and we went through some offensive stuff and (our style) is totally different,” Stevens said. “It’s night and day. Losing Gorden (Hayward) early we had to tweak and the last few losses you tweak some more and adding Greg Monroe who was unique to anyone we had, you’re constantly evolving as the season goes along. I don’t think that’s too unique, but it’s a little more drastic than usual.”