Kristaps Porzingis injury: Boston Celtics coach gives update on big man

BOSTON — When Kristaps Porzingis emerged from the locker room during halftime to go through some warmups, it looked like the Celtics big man was fine. He wasn’t on the C’s bench for the majority of the second quarter, but he was at least on the court seemingly ready to start the second half.

Turns out, Porzingis wasn’t ready to go as he retreated back to the locker room and wasn’t seen for the rest of the game. The big man was downgraded to questionable on the injury report with an illness and didn’t play the rest of the stunning Game 1 loss to the Knicks on Monday.

“I haven’t seen him yet,” C’s coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We’ll check on him. But obviously it impacts the game with his ability on both ends of the floor, and it obviously changes sub patterns or changes the things that you’re able to do matchup-wise and play-call frequency wise, so yeah, I think we felt it. But it’s no excuse. We had plenty of opportunities to do it, and hopefully he’s ready for Game 2.”

Porzingis, who struggled throughout the first round, had another tough start as he missed all four of his shots. He did gather four offensive rebounds, though some of those were on his own misses. Porzingis also missed a close look at the bucket as it’s been a tough go for him these playoffs.

The illness is also worth monitoring for his future status. During the season, Porzingis missed eight straight games in March due to a viral illness. That sapped him of his strength as there were multiple setbacks. This bout of illness from Monday’s loss isn’t necessarily connected to the one from a couple months ago, but it’s still just another setback for the injury-prone big man.

The Celtics struggled to put away the Knicks after going up by 20 points midway through the third quarter. They saw their lead evaporate and the C’s didn’t have enough shots in overtime as they fell behind 1-0 to the Knicks in the East semifinals. They also set an NBA playoff record by missing 45 3-pointers as the faulty shots piled up by the end of the night.

“KP is big for us,” Jrue Holiday said. “Obviously so versatile, person who can either play in the paint or stretch the floor. Protects the rim, protects the paint, blocks shots and we definitely miss him, but, we’ve always had this next man up mentality. Until we know what’s up with KP we’ll just have to have that same mentality.”