Langford irons out mistakes
Young wing playing pivotal minutes again
Eons ago in the Orlando bubble, before he was sidelined by injuries later in the playoffs, Romeo Langford was playing important minutes and succeeding.
Now that he’s rejoined the Celtics after missing most of the season to wrist surgery rehab and then a harrowing bout with COVID, the second-year wing is playing at important junctures once again.
Now it’s a matter of cutting down on the mistakes that come with rust.
“Sometimes I slip up on defensive assignments. Out there I just be more focused and making some of the decision making when I do catch it on the run. Like last game, I fell on my face and threw the ball away a couple of times,” he said. “Those are the mistakes I’m talking about. I work on those every day and that’s why it’s frustrating when those mistakes do happen. Because I know I put so much time in and I do that and I see that every day. When I do make a mistake I get on myself. But that’s one thing I work on is not getting on myself, just keep playing and move on to the next play.
“(Teammates) just tell me to forget about it, because they see I work on it every day,” said Langford. “I don’t make those mistakes when I’m working out. It’s just one mistake and that’s why I play as hard as I do and do other things so those mistakes don’t seem as big, because I’m impacting the game in other ways that don’t make the one mistake seem as big.”
Fournier won’t make trip out West
Though the Celtics embark today on a tough three-game Western road trip with stops against the Nuggets, Blazers and Lakers, Evan Fournier won’t be getting on the flight, according to Brad Stevens.
The new Celtics wing continues to be sidelined by health and safety protocol.
But Fournier’s absence aside, the Celtics do have the majority of their rotation healthy and available — save for Kemba Walker on the second night of back-to-backs.
“We get continuity, hopefully, knock on wood, right?” said Stevens. “It’d be nice to have Evan, because he’s going to play a huge role for us if we’re going to achieve and reach our best, but it is nice to say, ‘OK, we know generally who is going to be playing when, what our rotation looks like.’
“It may change by a person or two here or there, depending on matchups, but for the most part, when we can start that group and we know who we need to bring off the bench and we have some healthy bodies you do feel like you can make progress instead of fighting, scratching and clawing to get the result, but not necessarily building. So that is a positive that we need to take advantage of. It doesn’t mean we’re going to win these games, it doesn’t mean anything other than we need to see if we can create some continuity and growth out of this stretch.”
More Tacko time?
As evidenced by Tuesday’s loss to Philadelphia, there are increasing opportunities for Tacko Fall in these stretch-run games.
“I am comfortable using Tacko,” said Stevens. “He’s had a good impact on the game when he’s been in. That said (the Philly game) was also a situation where there was no Tristan (Thompson), and Rob (Williams) was obviously struggling against (Joel) Embiid and got into foul trouble. He got some minutes, got some run, and that’s a challenging matchup. I thought Tacko did what we asked him to do, and that was try to make (Embiid) take jump shots without fouling.
Now Embiid did get to the rim, but you have to keep him off balance as much as you can. I thought Tacko did fine. Against Milwaukee he got in for about four minutes, a couple of minutes in the first half, and I thought he did a good job. It’s a really fast-paced game, but he brings something to the table that nobody else does.”