Celtics missing three starters for Sunday’s game against Wizards
Jaylen Brown and Derrick White will join Kristaps Porzingis on the bench as Boston takes on an opponent with the worst record in the NBA.
The Boston Celtics will be short-handed when they face the Wizards at 6 p.m. Sunday in Washington D.C. for the first game of a strenuous stretch. Jaylen Brown has been downgraded on the injury report because of a right ankle sprain. Jayson Tatum, though, was upgraded from questionable to available.
Boston will also be without Kristaps Porzingis (right hamstring strain) and Derrick White (left thumb sprain) for Sunday’s game, leaving only Tatum and Jrue Holiday as available for the start of a five-games-in-seven-days stretch.
The Celtics enter with a league-best 52-14 record, and a 9 1/2-game lead over the second-place Bucks in the Eastern Conference with just 16 games remaining. So they have plenty of wiggle room for the top seed in the playoffs, meaning they’re likely to prioritize resting their best players down the stretch.
The Wizards are at the bottom of the East standings with an 11-56 record, though they played the Celtics tough in Boston last month. The Celtics also have two games this week against the Pistons, who are 14th in the East.
Grant Williams has recently come under fire for being perceived as a bad locker room presence. The fifth-year veteran’s disastrous spell with the Dallas Mavericks significantly damaged his reputation around the NBA. During a recent interview on 98.5 The Sports Hub, legendary play-by-play announcer Mike Gorman noted how Williams had been a bad presence throughout his tenure in Boston.
Gorman’s comments went viral on social media. As such, Celtics star Jayson Tatum defended his former teammate.
Following his tough spell with the Mavericks, Williams was traded to the Charlotte Hornets at the Feb. 8 trade deadline. He has already begun to make his presence felt on the court and is clearly thriving in a new environment.
During his time with the Celtics, Williams was a core rotation piece in two Eastern Conference Finals runs and a trip to the NBA Finals. His tenure with the franchise didn’t end badly, either. He helped facilitate a sign-and-trade deal so Boston didn’t lose a core contributor for nothing.
Williams will now need to string together multiple seasons of solid production with little off-court issues if he wants to rebuild his reputation in the NBA. Unfortunately, when things go wrong following a trade, rumors begin to swirl. Now, he needs to focus on proving himself as a valuable on-court contributor and locker-room leader.
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