The Boston Celtics will be without shooting guard Paul Pierce indefinitely because of a right thumb injury.
To make matters worse, Pierce is also dealing with the flu and did not even attend the team’s last game.
Marquis Daniels will take Pierce’s spot in the starting lineup until he is able to return to the court.
Head coach Doc Rivers said that Pierce asked out of the lineup so that he could let the thumb heal.
Rivers is confident that other players on the team will step up with Pierce out of the lineup.
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 10:07 pm by steve
Paul Pierce has been a walking malady this season when it comes to injuries, and just after the All-Star break, Pierce’s season-long miseries continue.
Pierce sprained his thumb trying to fight through a screen against the Lakers on Thursday, which led to his worst game of the season on Sunday against the Denver Nuggets.
“There’s some pain when I catch the ball, and it’s really affecting my shot,” he said. “That’s the reason I’m not as aggressive.”
A week removed from winning the NBA All-Star three-point contest, Pierce was harassed by Denver into a season-low five points on 2-of-10 shooting.
“You go by feel,” Pierce said. “I tried to play off instincts, and my instincts are to shoot the ball. But it’s not the same shot.”
None of the other Celtics, including starting PG and SG Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen, had any idea that Pierce’s thumb would be bothering him as much as it did. Now, with Kevin Garnett finally getting healthy, Celtics coach Doc Rivers is questioning whether or not to shut Pierce down for the time being.
“You can see it on free throws,” Rivers said. “The thumb, the knee and the foot, it may have caught up to him right now. We may have to look at getting him some rest. On the surface, that’s the way it looks like it’s going.”
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 9:34 pm by bryan
Boston Celtics guard Rajon Rondo hinted at locker room issues spilling out to the play on the court.
Rondo said the team needs to star putting personal agendas aside and start playing together on the court.
He compared it to his first year with the team, and he said the comraderies is nowhere near the same.
Some of the problem probably has to due with Kevin Garnett’s knee problems and his lack of playing time.
Kendrick Perkins disagrees, saying he feels that the team is as tight as it has ever been despite some recent losses.
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 10:54 am by steve
For Celtics fans wondering what’s ailing their slumping team (besides injuries galore), All-Star PG Rajon Rondo hinted at some potential chemistry problems in Boston’s locker room.
“I can’t really elaborate on it too much, but I think we’ve just got to be a team with no agendas,” Rondo said to the Boston Herald. “We’ve got to play unselfish, you know? That’s on defense and offense. You’ve got to want the best for the next man out there regardless if you’re in the game playing well or you’re out of the game not playing well.”
“In the locker room, you can feel it,” Rondo continued. “You don’t feel like it’s the same continuity and camaraderie in the locker room as it was the first year [in 2007-08]. The first year, it was a crazy spirit in the locker room. But now it doesn’t feel the same. It’s not the same right now. We’ve got to find a way to get that back somehow, some way.”
With the imports of Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels to the Boston bench this year, and with Paul Pierce, Rondo, and Kevin Garnett each battling through injuries at different points of the year, the Celtics have looked disjointed as of late.
Coach Doc Rivers doesn’t seem to worried, either about the Celtics’ play as of late or about Rondo’s comments.
“I do like our chemistry, I like it a lot,” Rivers said on Wednesday before the Celtics faced the Heat. “[Rondo] was almost repeating what I said three weeks ago. It was more about the focus going into the last three or four weeks before the All-Star break. Too many agendas, too many guys worried about travel, worried about everything except for basketball and it tears your team apart for that stretch.
But Garnett and Celtics president of basketball operations, Danny Ainge, seemed to echo some of Rondo’s comments on Wednesday, saying that while they didn’t approve of him speaking out publically, they did have some chemistry issues that needed to be fixed sooner rather than later.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 8:29 pm by bryan
Just when the Boston Celtics thought they were finally getting healthy, another injury struck on Monday night.
The Celtics announced that swingman Paul Pierce suffered a strain of the middle part of his left foot on Monday night against the Wizards, this coming after NBA.com reported that Pierce may have broken the foot.
Celtics president of basketball operation Danny Ainge spoke with the Boston Globe on Tuesday night and said, “We feel comfortable with it and we are relieved. When he’s ready to play, he will play. I don’t know when that is.”
“We were concerned after watching the injury and seeing the soreness on Paul’s foot this morning and what it looked like on TV. I was worried, so I was very relieved to hear it was a sprained mid foot and that he’ll be back soon.”
After the game on Monday night, Pierce did his best to downplay forthcoming injury rumors, saying he thought he suffered a mild sprain of the foot.
“I’ll get some X-rays tomorrow, but I think it’s not going to be too bad,” Pierce told reporters after the game. “I would have known by now [if it was broken]. I think I’ll be all right.”
This should be a story worth monitoring going forward, especially as the Celtics head towards the trade deadline with the playoffs in mind.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 11:57 pm by bryan
