Kristaps Porzingis missed the Celtics’ matchup with the Thunder on Thursday night. Porzingis has missed seven of the last eight games with a non-COVID illness.
He has not played since the Celtics lost to Detroit on Feb. 26.
Porzingis said Monday he was dealing with an unidentified viral illness and is hoping to return soon. The Celtics upgraded his status to questionable for Wednesday’s game, but ultimately decided to hold him out.
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was asked about Porzingis’s status before the game. Mazzulla said he did not have any updates.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Porzingis’s absence changes the way the Celtics can play “significantly” on both ends of the floor. He also said that the Celtics are used to playing at less than full strength.
“Similar to Chet [Holmgren],” Daigneault said. “The combination of rim protection and floor-spacing is a really impactful thing because it really helps you win the rim on both ends. It shuts off the rim on one end, but then it keeps the paint open on the other.
“When he’s out there, that certainly changes the dynamic of how they attack, how they play and what they’re capable of. That opens up more space. They’re a great team, and usually when you open up more space, more opportunity on a great team, there’s guys that can step in and I think you’ve seen that all season.”
Daigneault said the Thunder try to emulate the Celtics’ resilience when starters are out.
“Boston is always missing one guy, it almost seems like, and yet these other guys step in there with a lot of confidence,” he said. “We try to be like that as well. We’ve missed a lot of guys and it opens things up. It definitely changes them, but it doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”
The Celtics are fifth in the league in defensive rating, but the Thunder entered ranked first in that category.
The highly-anticipated matchup featured two of the league’s brightest stars in Jayson Tatum and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, along with a pair of the league’s finest defenses.
“They do a great job of it. One of the best with their ball pressure, their physicality, their active hands, deflections,” Mazzulla said. “They’re really good at defending the paint and getting out to shooters to contest. It’s just the multiple effort buy-in to do that and that will be a challenge for us.”
Daigneault said the Celtics were “really well-coached, they’re really well-prepared. They have great schemes that they execute in a machine-like way.
“You don’t see them having a lot of confusion, break downs, lack of organization and so I think that’s a testament to the preparation and the execution by the team,” Daigneault added. “They just don’t beat themselves often on either end of the floor and then they’ve got talent on both ends of the floor and when you add that up, that’s why they’re as good as they are.”
Khari Thompson can be reached at [email protected].
