Horford returns to Celts’ lineup
Cleared to play 11 days after testing positive
Their latest brush with COVID considered, it didn’t take the Celtics long to put what they wanted on the floor at the start of a game.
Al Horford was cleared to play Friday night against Toronto, 11 days after testing positive for the coronavirus and going into the NBA’s health and safety protocol. Jaylen Brown’s return from COVID set off fireworks Wednesday in New York in the form of a 46-point, 46-minute performance.
Horford simply has to work through his first game of the season, with a likely 25-minute ceiling on his playing time.
“Shorter stints. He’s looked good but want to be conscious of his time out,” said Celtics coach Ime Udoka. “He’s ready to play, he’s worked out the last few days. Looked good. Very similar to Jaylen and we’ll have him ready in the starting lineup.”
The monitoring process will remain the same for both players.
“Just asking how they feel. Regardless we want to keep them to shorter stints than normal,” said Udoka. “Al’s a guy who’s very vocal and takes care of his body, so it’s not a hard thing. In general we want to leave him with shorter stints and leave it at that. If he feels good, we’ll get him back in as soon as possible. Possibly later, but we’re trying to keep him in the 20-25 minute range.”
The starting five
Udoka believes that the big tandem of Horford and Rob Williams can take this team a long way, and is very comfortable saying that
the combination is here to stay alongside Jayson Tatum, Brown and Marcus Smart.
“We looked at some guys early and were tinkering with some lineups and different guys, but Al was great before he had to go out, in open gym and training camp,” he said. “We felt he complements Rob well — they do different things well — but this is what we want to do going forward. Grant ( Williams) took his spot when he was out and did a wonderful job, but Al’s been great from Day 1 — the leadership and versatility he brings is kind of valuable to us.”
Shooting with Tatum
Udoka has a message for those who questioned Tatum’s shot selection during a 7-for-30 overall and 2-for-15 3-point performance against the Knicks.
They were good shots.
“We broke down the numbers of Jayson’s looks and thought it felt like he settled for one or two at a time, but 13 of those 15 were wide-open shots with space,” said the Celtics coach. “So yeah, we know he won’t miss those again. The main thing is keeping our composure — we had double-digit leads two times in the second quarter, and the third quarter. We had some turnovers there, but also wide-open shots that would have extended it. Credit to them for bouncing back, but we did the same at the end. For our guys the effort was there, so it’s a matter of knocking down shots and the game will be there.
“It’s a balance with our guys. Jayson was trying to get himself going at times but, at the same time, we had 34 assists on 48 buckets, and a lot of wide-open shots, so if we make those shots, assist numbers go up, probably doesn’t even go to overtime. But it is a balance with Jayson and Jaylen. Jaylen getting that hot obviously he’s gonna have the ball and there were some mismatches presented so we want to attack those.”