Boston Celtics All-Star point guard Kemba Walker will miss at least the next two games with left knee soreness that flared in the win over the Golden State Warriors on Thursday night.
"Kemba’s out, most likely at minimum the next two games, maybe, and then we’ll reevaluate it after that,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said at the team’s shootaround Saturday. The Celtics host the 76ers on Saturday night, then travel to play Atlanta on Monday. "But his knee flared up on Thursday, same knee that he had been dealing with earlier in the year. He was very sore [Friday]. He tried to give it a go today, but he’s not playing.”
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Trainers could be seen working on Walker’s knee on the bench in the win over the Warriors. Walker finished with 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting over 31 minutes.
Stevens was asked if Walker is dealing with tendinitis.
"I don’t know what they’ve officially labeled it as but it’s been ongoing all year,” said Stevens. "And he missed, I think, a game earlier this month for it. But it flared up. You could tell he didn’t have his normal burst the other day. I don’t think it’s anything that we think is a long, long-term thing by any means but we certainly may have to manage it.”
"It’s OK. I’m a little sore,” said Walker. "I was a little sore last game, just thought it made the most sense to kind of take tonight off and just see how it goes day by day.”
Boston Celtics
Walker said he didn’t undergo any new imaging on the knee — he had previously gotten testing when the soreness flared earlier in the season — and he didn’t seem overly concerned about the knee moving forward.
"Just sore. A lot of basketball. I played a lot of basketball from summertime to now,” said Walker. "Just a lot of games, I mean, it’s just what happens throughout the course of an NBA season.
"I’ve had some surgeries over the years. It happens. Just because we play so much, just the wear and tear of the season. It happens."
Walker admitted it was tough to sit out big games like Saturday’s visit from East rival Philadelphia.
"It’s tough. I’m a competitor,” said Walker ."I love to play, especially against teams like Philly who are a great team. So it’s definitely a tough decision for me to sit this one out. But, at the end of the day, I just have to look at the long haul. We’re looking to get to the playoffs and make a run, so I’ve got to look at it that way.”
Enes Kanter is out again as well due to a hip bruise, leaving the team without its best bruiser to joust with Joel Embiid. Kanter did some on-court work and then ran on a treadmill above the Celtics practice court after shootaround.
"I think [Kanter is] pretty close,” said Stevens. "But I thought the other day when I saw him moving it was probably unlikely. Today, he looked a little bit better, but still out.”
The Celtics recalled Tacko Fall to add big-man depth behind starter Daniel Theis. Carsen Edwards remains on assignment with Maine.
Boston is 0-3 against the Sixers, a primary Eastern Conference rival, this season.
For the Celtics, the revolving door of injuries has to be maddening and has left it unclear just how good this team can be. When whole, the Celtics look like one of the better teams in the East, but that’s been so rare that it’s difficult to tell what this team is capable of with greater continuity and chemistry.
"I think it’s a challenge, just generally with our group. I don’t think we’ve had enough time to truly evaluate the group as a whole, especially as you move into a week like this, right, where you have the trade deadline coming and everything else,” said Stevens. "But we feel good about our team when we haven’t had everybody and we feel better about our team when we have. We look forward to that day, we hope that it’s sooner rather than later.
"Obviously, Kemba’s a short-term thing, we hope to get him back some time in the very near future; Kanter’s short-term; and then Rob just keeps progressing well and so we’re crossing our fingers on that one, too.”
Stevens stressed that there will still be a lot of time over the final two months of the regular season for the Celtics to find the best version of themselves.
"We’ll have time. We’ll have time. It’s a long season,” said Stevens. "During this stretch, in particular, we haven’t had a chance to practice much anyways, just because of the number of games and the limited time in between games. So we’ll have actually more time to do that after the break and so we’ll have time to become the best version of ourselves if we can get everybody back and healthy.”
The trade deadline looms next week and the lack of consistent health only complicates matters for Danny Ainge, who is left to lean on small samples to gauge exactly where the team might need upgrades. Boston clearly has a need for shooting but some of its depth woes might be alleviated by a run of better health.
The Celtics will cling to the notion that — when they’ve had all their horses, as they did last month in their blowout of the Lakers — they’ve played some of their best basketball. A larger sample would inspire more confidence, but it simply hasn’t happened for them through the first half of the 2019-20 season.
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