The Celtics are hoping Kristaps Porzingis can recover from his right soleus (calf) strain in time for the Eastern Conference Finals, Chris Haynes reported tonight on TNT (video link via ClutchPoints). Porzingis was ruled out for Game 5 after suffering the injury on Monday, but no official announcement has been made beyond that. Sources tell Haynes that team officials are optimistic that Porzingis can make a full recovery with some time off.
“The Celtics are very ecstatic and happy that this injury wasn’t any more severe,” Haynes said. “He will use his time to rest and rehab and then he will be re-evaluated at the six- or seven-day mark to see how he is feeling and go from there.”
Appearing on a Boston radio show, coach Joe Mazzulla confirmed that doctors will reexamine Porzingis next week to see how much progress he has made, writes Brian Robb of MassLive.
“I don’t know the specifics of it, they used a lot of fancy words,” Mazzulla said. “But I do know it’ll be kind of a more reevaluated next week. We’ll see how he responds to the treatment and how much better he gets here in the first week. I think that’s kind of the goal is to just get crazy in the next week and see where we’re at from there.”
There’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- Cameron Johnson was one of two Nets players who showed up to welcome new head coach Jordi Fernandez at his introductory press conference, according to a NetsDaily article. Johnson admitted being disappointed by his performance this season, which played a role in the coaching change and caused him to be pulled from the starting lineup. “Nobody ever says anything will be handed to you, anything will be easy, adversity won’t come up, so it’s part of it,” he said. “You just got to take it, keep it pushing, keep working, and focus on tomorrow, focus on what we can do today.”
- The Nets have to be careful in how they deal with Mikal Bridges, who will be eligible for an extension this summer, Keith Smith of Spotrac states in his offseason preview for the team. Smith believes Bridges is miscast as a franchise player in Brooklyn because he doesn’t score consistently enough to lead the offense and he doesn’t have enough size to anchor the defense. Smith sees a three-year extension in the range of $100MM to $120MM as reasonable, but adds that anything beyond that could be a bad use of resources.
- The Sixers are taking steps to make sure Wells Fargo Center isn’t filled with Knicks fans for Game 6 like it was on Sunday, per David Aldridge of The Athletic. The team’s ownership joined with Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin to purchase and distribute more than 2,000 tickets from the secondary market.