Celtics Notebook: Positive injury news (for once) & the playoff have already begun for Boston

The Boston Celtics held a rare practice on Tuesday afternoon before their trip to Orlando. They'll play the Magic Wednesday night in what is, to Brad Stevens, essentially the beginning of a seven game series that just happens to involve six different teams.

"Our playoffs clearly have started," he said, emphasizing the importance of the next 12 days. "Hopefully we can have our best seven games defensively as we head into whatever our postseason opportunities are."

Whatever lessons were hammered home in this practice need to show themselves on the floor immediately. The Celtics are now three games out of the fourth seed, 1.5 out of fifth, and one out of sixth. A loss to a bad team like Orlando would be rough, likely costing the Celtics their longshot chance at making up what is usually an insurmountable deficit.

Boston's saving grace at the moment is their two remaining games against current sixth seed Miami, and the season-ending game in New York against the current fourth-seed Knicks. Sweeping the Miami games and beating New York to take the tiebreaker will be huge, but the Knicks are also on a monster west coast swing. They are in Denver tomorrow night and have road games in Phoenix and Los Angeles against both the Laker and Clippers before returning home to finish against San Antonio, Charlotte, and Boston. A stumble now could open the door for Boston.

It means nothing if Boston doesn't step up their play right now. The lack of practice time has put the Celtics behind, but they still have an opportunity to make the most of the time they have left.

"I’d say you’re 10 or 20% behind normal of what you usually would get with regard to time on the court, honing the techniques and system things that can make you better and make you good," Stevens said. "I thought today’s practice was a positive, and we’ll need every day to be something that adds to what we’re doing, because these last seven games are super meaningful. Every single minute of every one of these games."

A POSITIVE HEALTH UPDATE

Kemba Walker has missed four games with a strained oblique. Jaylen Brown has been nursing a sore right ankle which he aggravated in a collision with Jayson Tatum Sunday night, sending both back to the locker room. The good news out of all of this is that only Brown missed practice.

"Jayson practiced full, Kemba practiced full," Stevens said. "Jaylen’s out tomorrow. But very much day to day after that."

There should be no assumptions, but Boston still should be able to beat the Magic without Brown. The ascension of Aaron Nesmith, if it continues, should help at least minimize the damage.

As for Walker, the added time would theoretically be a boost for the maintenance of his left knee pain, but Stevens says that's not really a concern right now.

"His knee is good. Like he’s done a good job. He’s worked really hard at strengthening it," Stevens said. "We’ve stayed with the no back-to-backs and that’s been a difficult thing at times for our team but I think it was the right move for Kemba. As a result, I think his knee feels pretty good heading into the latter part of the season. Going to be quite a challenge to ultimately get to where we want to go but he is obviously -- his health is of utmost importance to anything that we can possibly achieve as a group."

FOURNIER'S FOG LIFTING?

Evan Fournier is returning to Orlando for the first time since being traded away by the Magic.

"I obviously want to be locked in and focused and not think about anything else but winning and playing hard for the Celtics," he said. "But after playing seven years on one team of course you're gonna have some memories and I'm going to see familiar faces and all that, so hopefully that won't distract me.”

It can't be more of a distraction than the COVID-19 aftermath he's been experiencing, which he compared to having a concussion. He still managed a 21 point night in the loss to Portland, but it was his first good game since his return from health & safety protocols. He's hoping an unusual step will help him recover.

"Actually I had my first vaccine yesterday. Pfizer," he said. "Apparently there was, like, a lot of people reporting that after getting the vaccine they started to feel better. So, we'll see."

Whether that works or not is yet to be seen. Fournier hopes it can accelerate the process of feeling normal again. Once he does, it could make the Celtics a more feared team in the playoffs, regardless of what he's asked to do.

"When you join a team mid-season you can't just talk about role. We all have to come in, play hard, play defense, make the right play, share the ball, and just be myself," Fournier said. "When we talk about role, I think it's always tricky. I'm going to play as hard as I can and try to do my best. And I think that's what I expected from all of us, period.”

The next step is taking down his old team and then, his old teammate Nikola Vucevic, who is now with Chicago, Boston's Friday night opponent.

"I had a great time in Orlando. I really did. But I really moved on,"  Fournier said. "Playing for the Celtics, it’s a golden opportunity, like I said. So I’m fully here and my focus is really with this team. I don’t have any extra motivation or anything to play against the Magic. I just want to get there, win and just go home.

"Then Chicago, that’s going to be a little different because Vuc and I are really close. We are good friends and playing against him, we are the total opposite; he likes to talk a lot in games, after and before, and I’m the total opposite. I’m locked in, I don’t talk to anybody. So he’s going to try to trick me for sure."

NO FURTHER DISCIPLINE FOR SMART ... YET

Marcus Smart was ejected from the Portland game for what the officials determined to be an unsportsmanlike act, or basically a targeting of Jusuf Nurkic's nether region while trying to fight through a screen.

There is no further word on discipline yet from the league, but it has put Smart squarely in the crosshairs of some talking heads around town. Stevens, though, has consistently defended Smart, and praised his intensity as a driving force for his good play rather than the thing that sometimes pushes him across a line or two.

"We need all five guys to play with great intensity and great physicality and great toughness, great poise, all those things. Marcus obviously has impacted us for a lot of years in those ways. And we need him to be a guy, especially at the head of our defense on a lot of occasions, that can impact the ball without fouling."

"I thought he did some good things up until the end in the Portland game but, before the Charlotte game, I’d say those couple of weeks, maybe before the Oklahoma City game, he was having some of his best basketball that he’s played all year," he continued. "(He) was impacting us in ways, regardless, he made a couple big shots in that stretch and but more so was impacting us in all the little things that lead to winning on both ends of the court."

He was already suspended last week for threatening language towards a game official. There's no doubt Smart's history plays into decisions like this from the league, so we'll wait and see if there's more to this story.