Fournier hexed by protocols
No luck of the Irish for Celtics this season
As if it hasn’t been bad enough for the NBA team most impacted by COVID this season, Evan Fournier missed Tuesday night’s game against Philadelphia with his second visit to health and safety protocol since joining the Celtics.
CELTICS NOTEBOOK
Including Fournier’s most recent miss, the Celtics have lost a league-leading 41 player-games to the combination of positive tests and contact tracing.
“For Evan, yeah, that’s tough. That’s been our season,” said Jaylen Brown. “It’s unfortunate. It’s been a year — it’s been our story, for the most part. Hopefully we can get him back in time and still make a run without him. Play some basketball and keep this thing going.”
But in the short term, the Celtics will once again have to do without a player who, in a small sample size, has proved vitally important to their big picture.
“I’m not going to get into specifics, but the thing I’d say is I wouldn’t expect to see him this week,” said Brad Stevens, referring to tonight’s game against New York and Friday’s against Minnesota.
Brown strengthening his balky knee
Brown, who missed a game last week due to knee soreness, said he’s developing a program with the Celtics’ training staff to strengthen the knee. His main question remains why the soreness has reappeared.
“First, my knee is getting better,” he said. “I think it’s moving in the right direction. So that’s a good thing. We’ve been working to build a plan around it. Makes no sense, I’m 24.”
Lingering effects
Stevens said he hopes to bring Tristan Thompson back for the Knicks game. The power forward not only missed 13 games while in health and safety protocol — he’s missed the last three while working back into shape. As Romeo Langford has noted, and Jayson Tatum originally talked about, COVID can have lingering effects even on a professional athlete.
But the Celtics clearly have a need for Langford — even more against Philadelphia due to the absence of Fournier.
“I think we have a great sense of where he is, as far as where he’s come and everything else, but he’s going to be rusty for awhile,” said Stevens. “That’s just the way it goes. He hasn’t played basketball since the bubble, and didn’t get a chance to play in the seeding games or the playoffs just because, especially after that Philly series with his wrist.
“But I think that he adds a great deal of value to our team. I think he knows how to play,” said the Celtics coach. “He moves the ball on offense. He obviously has to improve his efficiency as a scorer, we all can see that. But he steps into our team, without playing, and becomes one of our better wing defenders right now. And I think that is where he has a chance to impact us the most. Because, as you know, one of our challenges this year has been we ultimately have often been small at that spot off the bench.
“That allows everybody to guard a little bit better when you have a guy that’s so versatile that you can throw in there. He’s not going to be a heavy minute guy for awhile. We’ll get him up as fast as we can so that he should be a part of our rotation. Another thing that’s good is it allows us to play other smalls, and try other smalls. I think sometimes it’s hard to play Payton (Pritchard) and Carsen (Edwards) together. But other times there’s matchups where we need to look at Carsen. And it’s hard to play Kemba (Walker) and Payton together. But I just think you have opportunities with Romeo that complement some of our smaller players.”