Kyrie's injury doesn't appear to be long-term, Morris' knee another story

Kyrie's injury doesn't appear to be long-term, Morris' knee another story

NBC SPORTS BOSTON By A. Sherrod Blakely December 11, 2017 7:10 PM

The quad injury that will keep Kyrie Irving off the floor tonight against Chicago doesn’t appear to be a long-term issue.

The knee bruise that had Al Horford’s availability in question - NBC Sports Boston's Abby Chin says he will play tonight - isn’t a serious thing, either.

But it’s unclear just how big a deal Marcus Morris’ left knee issue is going forward.

Prior to Sunday’s 91-81 win at Detroit, the Pistons announced that Morris would miss that game as well as tonight’s matchup against Chicago.

A Yahoo Sports! report said that Morris will miss “extended time” due to the left knee injury that has resulted in him missing 13 games which includes tonight’s game.

“Just like I said the other day, when we found out that he wasn’t feeling as good, we decided that he wasn’t going to play in these two games, we’ll re-evaluate it tomorrow with our docs,” Celtics head coach Brad Stevens told reporters prior to tonight’s game against Chicago. “That meeting has already been scheduled.”

Morris missed the first eight games of the season to give the left knee soreness a chance to heal and not be as sore. The Celtics began him with a minutes restriction, and increased his playing time gradually while not allowing him to play in back-to-back games.

And this latest flare-up comes at a time when Morris seemed to find a groove at both ends of the floor while providing Boston with some much-needed offensive punch off the bench.

“He played so well against Philly and Phoenix … I thought he looked really good,” Stevens said. “Played that Monday against Milwaukee and then missed the Dallas game, it’s just been kind of going back and forth. And it’s what we said from the get-go, we didn’t want that to happen. But we’ve got to figure it out for him so that he feels great.”

The Chicago Bulls will be short-handed as well tonight.

In addition to Zach LaVine (left ACL) and Cameron Payne (right foot), Chicago will also be without rookie Lauri Markkanen (back spasms) who is averaging 14.3 points and 7.9 rebounds which ranks fifth and second, respectively, among rookies this season.

112288

This is not good. Morris is a key guy on the court and if he is to miss extended time.............it's going to hurt the Celtics in a number of ways

> Talent on the floor and his 2 way contributions

> Strain on the players as we do not have a vet substitute to replace him and rookies are just that rookies.

Let us see if there are any buy-out or releases coming up.

112288

112288

We're thin on bigs.  We're angstrom-thin on bench scoring.  I don't know if Jabari Bird can fill the "big" part of it, although he might with the scoring, but I'll bet Danny won't want to upgrade his contract from a 2-way to a regular NBA contract until it is clear he is not going to use the DPE on another player, and that might not happen until February (the NBA trade deadline is 2/8/18) when players are bought out in anticipation of needing an open roster slot for a trade or just a buyout.  Even if Bird gets his Wally Pipp break Danny will use up all his available days on the 2-way contract first.  2-way contracts allow for up to 45 days with the team. 

The trade deadline is 58 days away.  Bird has already used up a handful of them, so let's say he has 35-38 left.  It is possible, given days in between games and road trips where he might not be with the team at all, Danny could stretch him all the way out to the deadline before having to make a decision about him.  I'm not saying Danny should upgrade Bird, I'm saying that he could fit the "scorer off the bench" role we desperately need and he already knows Brad's playbook.

This is also Nader and Yabby's big chances too, especially Yabby.  We need a big who can score off the bench and that could/should be him.



bob


.

"This is also Nader and Yabby's big chances too, especially Yabby. We need a big who can score off the bench and that could/should be him".

Bob, a quote from the last line in your post is spot on................ However
YOU HAVE TO PLAY'EM IN ORDER TO GET TO KNOW THEM AND WHAT THEY CAN DO!

Please send you post to Brad as he has failed to integrate both of these guys into the lineup to get them reps so as to evaluate them better on what they can contribute to the team now.

I think this long winning streak hurt player evaluation then helped the team overall.

112288

112288 wrote:"This is also Nader and Yabby's big chances too, especially Yabby.  We need a big who can score off the bench and that could/should be him".

Bob, a quote from the last line in your post is spot on................ However
YOU HAVE TO PLAY'EM IN ORDER TO GET TO KNOW THEM AND WHAT THEY CAN DO!

Please send you post to Brad as he has failed to integrate both of these guys into the lineup to get them reps so as to evaluate them better on what they can contribute to the team now.

I think this long winning streak hurt player evaluation then helped the team overall.

112288

112288,

Good point, however one doesn't usually need to play 13th and 14th men and, I would be willing to bet, very few coaches do.


bob


.

I think Theis will be the main guy who benefits from not having Morris.  Semi will also see an uptick in his minutes.  This is not a bad thing because it gives Brad a chance to accelerate their development which bodes well come playoff time.  Bird seems like a logical choice to focus at the SG.  Nadar could see some minutes at SF

Yabu probably also sees more action but his ball handling skills are so poor that every time he touches it I think he is going to turn the ball over.

If the team starts to trend in the wrong direction because of a weaker bench Danny may use the DPE sooner rather than later.  

Injuries are part of the game.

dboss