Boston Celtics: Implications of Kyrie Irving’s injury news
Boston Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving will be sidelined for 4-5 months after news broke about another knee procedure.
Thursday afternoon, all seemed to be going well for Boston Celtics fans, despite taking a big loss to the Toronto Raptors, the number one seed in the Eastern Conference, the night before. It’s hard to beat one of the best teams in the league when you’re shorthanded.
The feeling was that we would maybe see Kyrie Irving return in the playoffs. The earliest we could expect was the first round, and there was no indication he was having any problems thus far.
Then news broke that the All-Star point guard wouldn’t be returning at all this season or in the playoffs. He will be out 4-5 months and is expected to be back in time for training camp for the 2018-19 season. Already they’ve watch All-Star Gordon Hayward go down with a season-ending injury, and now this.
The injuries for this Celtics team continue to pile up and it just feels like there’s no end in sight. It’s been reported that he will be have two screws removed from his knee on Saturday. This is from the injury he sustained during the 2015 NBA Finals, in which he inserted those screws to repair a fracture.
What does this drastic change of scenery mean for Boston? Well… a few things.
Before we go into who will need to step up, Boston went out and signed Jonathan Gibson for the rest of the season. This signing will be an effort to hopefully build guard depth that may have been lacking as of late, or in the future if someone else has to miss time.
Gibson was originally an undrafted free agent out of New Mexico State. The 6’2″ guard only played in 17 games for the Dallas Mavericks during the 2016-17 season. In that time he averaged 6.2 points and 1.5 assists per game – about what you would expect from an undrafted player on a rebuilding squad.
Gibson was playing in the Chinese league this season, averaging a scorching 33.7 points, 6.8 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game. This is not to say that he’ll be averaging the same numbers for the Celtics, simply because the NBA and professional Chinese league are nowhere near the same competition level. We see those numbers from a lot of former pros.
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So who needs to step up in the wake of the injury news? We could go on and on about how each individual needs to step up, because it’s true that everyone will need to play harder in the playoffs with the Celtics’ best offensive weapon out. However, the main people that will need to be major factors are Terry Rozier and Al Horford.
Marcus Smart (currently out with a thumb injury) is targeting a conference semifinals return date. So, with him out of the equation, it’s very important for backup point guard Rozier, to step up in a major way.
That shouldn’t be too hard for him because he does already play with a massive heart for the game and will to win. As a starter this season, he’s averaging 17.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.3 steals per game.
No one has really viewed him as a threat to shoot the ball from 3, but he’s out there to change that narrative. This season as starter he’s shooting it 41.7 percent from 3 on 7.4 attempts per game.
Boston will need him to continue to provide big defense and scoring opportunities not only for himself, but his teammates as well. Going off of what we’ve seen from him thus far, we’d expect nothing less.
I really wanted to include Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum as the guy who will need to step up. While they need to as well, Horford is the one who needs to the most. Tatum and Brown are still young and trying to figure things out in the NBA, and as much as they’ve continued to impress us night in and night out, they’re still a long ways away from being final products.
Horford is the veteran in the locker room and will need to continue to anchor this Celtics team in the postseason. He’s been in the playoffs in almost every year of his career, playing in a total of 92 playoff games. That amount of experience is going to be valuable because he, more than anyone, understands what it takes to win big games.
The Celtics are a very young team and Horford is one of the few veterans on this roster. His stats aren’t sexy as some of the other players or centers in the league, but the value he brings to the roster is almost as measurable as those big-name players.
Horford is the ultimate team guy the Celtics. Never will he come out and disrupt the flow of a team or locker room if he’s not getting the right amount of shot attempts. Instead, he goes out there and takes what he can get, filling any crack in the game and finding ways to help the Celtics win more games.
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The whole roster will need to step up if the Celtics want to make a deep run in the playoffs. They’ve already had so many injuries that it doesn’t look like there’s an end in sight. What we do know, however, is that Horford and Rozier are going to be the two players that need to step up the most.