Irving less than thrilled
TORONTO — Though his numbers (17 points, 6-for-12) were quietly good, Kyrie Irving wasn’t pleased with how he returned from a three-game, injury-related absence.
“Didn’t feel as good as I wanted to,” said the Celtics point guard, who played a truncated 22 minutes last night when Brad Stevens decided to sit his starters for good in the third quarter of a 111-91 loss to the Raptors.
“Just from playing with a consistent pace,” Irving said of what he considered to be his main obstacle in getting back into the NBA flow. “Being out for a week in any profession is tough. No practice or anything like that. You just got to use the game as kinda getting your legs back and your timing back. Hopefully next game will be better.”
Baynes takes a hit
Aron Baynes left the floor after absorbing an errant elbow to the face from DeMar DeRozan in the third quarter, but returned to action after passing concussion protocol. The test was administered by Toronto’s team physician.
Monroe passes muster
The Celtics can’t talk about Greg Monroe until the veteran center officially signs, with even Irving saying yesterday, “Not yet.”
But Dwane Casey has a good idea of how the low-post specialist will fit. Monroe’s passing makes him adaptable to Stevens’ system.
The Raptors coach whistled last night before saying, “Too good. Because one, he’s an excellent passer. He’s a low-post scorer. You have to bang with him down on the block. And (he will) fit into their system as a passer. You can still space out (Al) Horford and play him down low. And (Monroe) is a very, very underrated passer. And I think that’s something that with their movement away from the ball and the splits that they have and the (dribble handoffs) that they have, another ball-handling big gives them another weapon.”
Stevens will adjust
The trade deadline is tomorrow, with his own team an active shopper, but Stevens had enough to worry about with Irving and Marcus Morris rejoining the lineup.
“I talked to him for the first time in three days today for like four minutes,” Stevens said of his contact with president of basketball operations Danny Ainge. “And it was absolutely nothing to do with anything that anybody else would be interested in.”
But should Ainge find some further way to alter the lineup beyond reaching an deal with Monroe, Stevens knows how to implement late-season changes.
And the season, he stressed, is indeed later than it might seem.
“I think we’ve got a good idea about how to transition appropriately and all that stuff because of what we’ve been through in the past,” Stevens said. “And I think that’s something that we want to be, if you do add, appropriately patient. But at the same time you’re trying to expedite it as much as possible because after the AllStar break, we have 23 games. So you know everybody always says when you hit the All-Star break, well, you’re halfway through the season. That’s not the case with us or anybody else. There’s not a lot of games left when you really look at it.”