The Boston Celtics have been without Kristaps Porzingis for the last six games, including Monday night’s win over the Utah Jazz, as the big man has been dealing what he described as a “viral illness” that the team hasn’t “been able to fully identify yet.”
Porzingis last suited up on Feb. 26 when the Celtics lost in Detroit and has been listed as out with a “non-COVID illness” ever since.
“I have been dealing with some viral illness that we haven’t been able to fully identify yet,” Porzingis posted on social media on Monday. “I am recovering and getting better. But still working my way back to full strength to help this team. Thanks for support and Im hoping for a healthy return soon.”
Porzingis sat with the team on Thursday for Boston’s win over the 76ers and went through warmups on Saturday prior to Boston’s win over the Lakers. Porzingis was listed as questionable for the Lakers game and doubtful for Monday night’s matchup with Utah, which the Celtics won, 114-108.
Before Monday’s game, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters that Porzingis is “getting close” to a return. Last Thursday, Mazzulla said Porzingis has been going to the team facility to get shots up “every day,” but hasn’t been feeling well.
Porzingis missed the first month of the season after undergoing offseason ankle surgery. Since his return, he has averaged 18.9 points, 6.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in 32 games played.
The Celtics have gone 5-1 over this latest stint without Porzingis, so there’s no real reason to rush him back to action before he’s ready. The Celtics, now 47-18, are basically locked into the No. 2 seed — eight games back of No. 1 Cleveland and five up on No. 3 New York with 17 games remaining.
The priority is the playoffs. Boston just needs to make sure Porzingis is right by then.
The Los Angeles Lakers began life without LeBron James, who’s expected to miss at least one to two weeks with a strained groin, on Monday with a 111-108 road loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
Luka Dončić finished with 22 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds, his second triple-double since joining the Lakers, but without James on the floor the Nets threw everything at Dončić defensively and the Lakers weren’t able to make them pay.
It’s not a terribly surprising development given the circumstances. These superstars that get blitzed by defenses all the time can only do so much if the other guys aren’t taking advantage of the overloaded defense by making the 4-on-3 plays on the backside.
That takes timing and rhythm, the old cliche of everyone being on the same page, which is easier said than done for a team like the Lakers that has added such a dominant piece like Dončić and is throwing out a lot of lineups that haven’t played a ton of time together.
LeBron James injury: How the Lakers can survive the next few weeks without the face of the league Sam Quinn LeBron James injury: How the Lakers can survive the next few weeks without the face of the league Now, when you have two players as intelligent and skilled as Dončić and James on the court, especially together, you can cover up for a lot of these “getting to know one another” kinks that typically take time to work out.
But without James — to say nothing of his own production — the subtlest of connections that keep an NBA offense flowing become a lot more difficult to execute on the fly with a starting lineup (Dončić with Austin Reaves, Dalton Knecht, Gabe Vincent and Alex Len) that, prior to Monday night, hadn’t played a single minute together, per Cleaning the Glass.
It wasn’t just James that was out, either. It was Dorian Finney-Smith and Rui Hachimura, too. And just when Jaxson Hayes was starting to really settle in as the exact kind of short-roll connector that can, and often does, slice up these blitzing defenses, he was out, too, and it was Len in that spot.
Still, Lakers coach JJ Redick was not in the mood for excuses following the game. Redick categorized his team’s performance as a “very low-level communication game” and said “being shorthanded is [not] an excuse for how we played basketball tonight.”
“I think it was just an overall mentality to take shortcuts tonight,” Redick said. “They scored 20 points on us gambling [defensively]. They had 16 offensive rebounds. We ball-watched all night. They probably made six or seven uncontested 3s. Just shortcuts. You want to be a good team, you want to win in the NBA, you got to do the hard stuff.
“We couldn’t even pass to each other,” Redick continued as he became visibly frustrated. “We couldn’t enter our offense. Running ball screens literally at half court … I don’t know what we were doing.”
Dončić, despite being extremely effective as a playmaker and downhill creator, has not shot well with the Lakers, and he wasn’t shooting well with the Mavericks before he was traded either. He made just eight of 26 shots on Monday while missing seven of his 10 3-pointers.
“[We] should’ve made better decisions,” Dončić said. “I think we started the game doing a really good job, good decisions. But then we just kind of let go of the rope. We got comfortable.”
This would’ve been a big night for Reaves to step up in James’ absence but he was off as well, finishing 3 for 14 and 1 for 5 from 3.
“I just thought I played incredibly bad,” Reaves admitted. “When Bron’s out, I’ve got to be better, and I wasn’t, and that’s one of the reasons we lost.”
The Nets (22-42) don’t make life easy on anyone. They finally seem to have embraced the incentive they have to tank the rest of the way and lost seven straight before Monday. But even when they lose to good teams they push them to the limit.
Within that seven-game losing streak, they got up 22 on the Warriors and led Oklahoma City in the fourth quarter. It’s not shocking they would beat Lakers team playing without James, even if Redick and company aren’t going to use that as an excuse, as they shouldn’t.
Because the reality is, James is going to be out for a decent bit, and the Lakers’ upcoming schedule is no cakewalk with their next six games coming against Milwaukee, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Denver and Milwaukee again.
And these are crucial games, to say the least. With the loss on Monday, the Lakers (40-23) fell behind Denver, which beat Oklahoma City, into No. 3 in the West (tied in the loss column), and is just one game up on No. 4 Memphis and two up on No. 5 Houston with 19 games remaining.
Denver Nuggets guard Christian Braun didn’t enter this season trying to fill anyone’s shoes, but naturally comparisons happen when a two-time champion exits the team and everyone is looking at you to step up. The departure of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope this past summer left a vacancy in Denver’s backcourt, one that many expected Braun to fill.
“I think a lot of people probably look at it like that, but for me it was more what I bring to this roster is also complementary of what they want and what they need,” Braun said. “There’s a lot of similarities between [Caldwell-Pope] and me already. So I didn’t even change my game. I didn’t need to try to be Pope, but I tried to take things from him, learn things from him that he did when he was here, which is what I bring to this lineup.”
It wasn’t a guaranteed promotion for Braun, Nuggets head coach Michael Malone made sure of that. Malone is big on earning your minutes. “I never believe in just giving things away,” Malone said before the season. “I want guys to earn it and fight for it… Competition is healthy. Lucky for me, we have two young players who are going to make it a very tough decision.”
The two players Malone envisioned of battling for that starting spot were Braun and Julian Strawther, and to a lesser degree Peyton Watson. Braun showed enough during training camp and preseason to earn that starting spot on opening night, but says its “earned every day and every game.”
In his first season as a full-time starter, Braun’s doubled his scoring production from a year ago. He’s also averaging career highs in rebounds and assists, while improving his efficiency. Life tends to be easier when you’re playing next to Nikola Jokić, an all-time great who commands so much defensive attention that virtually every shot you’re going to take is open. But Braun still has to knock them down and finish at the rim, and he’s been doing it extremely efficiently this season.
Christian Braun’s year-to-year stats Year Minutes/G Points/G Rebounds/G Assists/G FG% 3P% 2024-25
33.5
15.3
5.1
2.4
56.9%
38.7%
2023-24
20.2
7.3
3.7
1.6
46.0%
38.4%
2022-23
15.5
4.7
2.4
0.8
49.5%
35.4%
The leap in his raw stats is a natural thing to see when a player goes from averaging just a hair over 20 minutes a game to 30+, but you typically see some sort of decline in efficiency. That hasn’t been the case for the Kansas product, especially at the rim.
Most of Braun’s shots come at the basket, often off transition finishes quarterbacked by the likes of Jokić, Jamal Murray and Russell Westbrook:
… Or backdoor cuts to the rim:
…Or inverted pick-and-rolls with Jokić as the ballhandler:
On all of those shots Braun’s shooting 70% at the rim, a 10% bump from a season ago, and he’s doing it on nearly double the attempts. He also owns a true-shooting percentage of 65.6%, which ranks fifth in the league for players averaging at least 30 minutes a game. True-shooting percentage accounts for 3s, 2s and free throws, making it a more holistic way to measure how efficient a player is. Guys near the top of that list are usually traditional centers and power forwards who get most of their buckets around the basket like Rudy Gobert or on close-range jumpers, like Jokić, as well as players who are incredibly efficient scorers and get to the line frequently, like Stephen Curry and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Well, besides Gobert, Braun has a higher TS% than all of those guys mentioned.
Braun is obviously not the focal point of the offense like many of those guys named, so his usage rate is significantly lower. But it’s the perfect example of starring in your role. And the fact that he’s been so efficient while having the heaviest workload of his career is nothing to scoff at.
“Anytime you see an improvement in any phase of a player’s game, it starts in the gym, being there getting reps in,” Malone said ahead of Braun posted a career-high 28 points in a loss to the Bulls in late January. “It’s not going to happen by accident. So [Braun] obviously understands that, ‘Hey, I got to be a more efficient finisher in traffic, getting to the foul line, running in transition.’ And so all those things that you’re seeing, any improvements, you know [Braun] deserves credit, because he’s definitely put the time in and become better in all areas across the board.”
The leap Braun’s taken came at a time when the Nuggets needed it most. Caldwell-Pope left in the offseason, leaving Denver without its 3-and-D mercenary who was relied on heavily during the team’s championship run in 2023. That, coupled with Aaron Gordon missing 20 games this season due to calf and ankle injuries, meant that the Nuggets were going to need one of their young guys to pop.
Braun’s taken on that challenge, and has played in all but one game this season, an impressive feat when availability has been a constant talking point across the league for years. Over Braun’s three-year career, he ranks eighth in the NBA in games played, and is tied with Mikal Bridges and Toumani Camara for third-most games played this season (min. 30 minutes/game).
“A big part of being valuable is being available, being reliable when the team needs you and being out there every single game,” Braun said. “[Not missing games] is a goal of mine. It’s really important because you get paid to play and you get paid to be available, so I want to be out there as much as possible.”
Over the last six weeks, Braun’s only elevated his game to another level, highlighted by a 25-point outing against the Phoenix Suns on March 7, where he hit what would’ve been the game-winning 3-pointer had Kevin Durant not spoiled the moment by sending the game to overtime on the next possession. He finished with 25 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the floor, including a 4-of-5 showing from 3-point range, in a near-perfect performance from the third-year guard.
Braun has been the ideal complementary player next to Jokić and Jamal Murray. He knows where to move on the floor to get himself open, when to cut if Jokić or Murray are getting swarmed, and always has his hands ready out on the perimeter to catch a no-look pass from Jokić or a kick-out from Murray for a 3-pointer.
“Since Day 1 he was that guy who was going to run hard in transition, play good defense and take the open looks,” Jokić said after a late February game where Braun finished with 26 points on 12-of-14 shooting from the floor. “Some nights he’s going to score 26 points, some nights he’ll score 14 or 10, but I like the mindset and how he’s playing. We don’t have another player like him on our team.”
It’s not just the offense where Braun has taken strides, he’s been tasked with more responsibility on the defensive side of the ball, too. He’s not a lockdown defender by any means, but he has great instincts that can sometimes result in a turnover, kickstarting Denver’s transition offense, which ranks fifth in scoring. His size allows him to guard multiple positions, and the energy he plays with usually leads to deflections or steals.
There will be some tough competition for Most Improved Player, but Braun (who has the third-shortest odds at +3000 behind Cade Cunningham and Dyson Daniels) has more than done enough to at least be in the conversation. There’s been times where he’s been the third-best player for the Nuggets, and he’s come up clutch on a number of occasions already. The next big test will be to see if this production carries over into the playoffs, where the Nuggets will need him to sustain that efficiency if they want to go on a deep run in the gauntlet that is the Western Conference.
PHILADELPHIA — This wasn’t exactly the way Devin White planned his resurgence with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Looking for a fresh start to his career, White signed with the Eagles following five seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. White hoped for a fresh start in Philadelphia after a rough outing in Tampa Bay, yet hasn’t played through the first two games.
Monday’s loss was the low point. White was a healthy scratch in the loss, not being on the field when the defense collapsed in the final two minutes. Perhaps White could have helped if he was active.
“Very frustrating but it ain’t the end of the world,” White said being a healthy scratch. “You know, when I look, turn on the tape I see a lot of good things about myself. I’m pretty sure they do too.
“So I just got keep working, you know, get better at the next thing and just keep going.”
White has handled the demotion with professionalism, which had to be a tough pill to swallow since he spent all of training camp with the first team. He’s been in this situation before with the Buccaneers, making this situation easier to handle.
“I don’t think I handled it the best,” White said telling the story of his benching in Tampa Bay. “You know, it was a lot going on that we didn’t expect to go on, just far as you know, starting off asking for a trade. That wasn’t like me, but I did it, you know, I had to own up to it, went to work, went to training camp, did everything right, you know, obviously getting hurt, trying to play through the injury, coming out of injury, keep playing, and then didn’t play.
“Everybody say, I got benched but I was literally inactive because of health reasons. And that’s cool, you know, got past it, came back, they worked me into the game with my foot and played nickel and did good at my role and that was the end of it.
“I’ve been in that situation before of just having to overcome adversity. Just make a man out of you at the end of the day.”
Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio won’t be making wholesale changes to the defense, but there could be a time when White is needed. Perhaps that time will come Sunday.
“He’s practicing and staying attentive and ready to roll,” Fangio said. “Special teams plays a part of it. But yeah, he’s ready and available.”
Special teams could be the ticket to get White in the game, but even he’s admitted he doesn’t have many snaps in that portion of the game.
“I mean, like when COVID was going on we was playing the Saints and Jack Cichy broke his arm and Kevin Minter was out with COVID,” White said. “Me, Lavante David, and Shaq Barrett. We rotated on punt reps, but that was just one game.”
The opportunity could come for White at some point this season. Right now, the former first-round pick has to wait for that moment.
“It’s about how you respond. How you handle yourself because that’s the only thing I can control,” White said. “You know, I can’t put myself in the game, but I can control my attitude, my health, every practice and, you know, just my swagger in the building.
“Still come here every day like a pro and handle my business. I got a son. He can cry when he doesn’t get his way. That isn’t for me to do.”
PHILADELPHIA — Britain Covey finally had the opportunity to show the Philadelphia Eagles what he could do at wide receiver. The opportunity was three years in the making, a chance for Covey to prove he can play as big of a role in the offense as he does on special teams.
“I think it was awesome,” said Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore on Covey’s performance. “Great example of a guy who hops in there late in the week and is ready to roll.”
Covey was called to action after A.J. Brown tweaked his hamstring in practice late last week. Knowing his role in the offense, Jalen Hurts backed up his trust in Covey with six targets, leading to six catches for 23 yards. Covey also had a 7-yard and 14-yard catch taken away from two illegal man downfield penalties.
“The game plan wasn’t too adjusted to what position I was going to play,” Covey said. “But, I mean, we have so much experience where I come in, we put Smitty back outside, put me in the slot and it’s just working. It’s just going to work as usual.
“I pride myself on separation above all things, because I can’t afford to not have separation of myself. So my goal is to always have a yard more separation than anybody else, and I did it.”
With Brown still on the mend, Covey is going to get even more chances to catch passes in the coming weeks. The Eagles wideout has earned the trust of Jalen Hurts over the past few years, making him an easy target (pun intended) in the passing game.
“That’s what happens in NFL seasons. Guys like Covey, they’re ready and they’re available, and they never know when they’re going to have to hop out there,” Moore said. “And he jumped out there and handled it really well, converted some stuff, gave us some nice run after catch and a lot of positives.”
Covey preferred to overshadow his performance with the end result — a loss. His face in the locker room after Monday’s game said it all.
“I’m hopeful for more opportunities, but man I just want to win,” Covey said. “That was the most frustrating. Like, I wasn’t even happy after the game that I got involved. It was just so frustrating.”
The sting of the loss impressed Hurts the most, even after Covey’s big night. Covey’s a part of this offense moving forward, proving he’s more than just a really good punt returner on one of the most talented teams in the NFL.
“He showed up for us, Hurts said. “And we’ll need him to continue to do that.”
Jordan Love’s rapid recovery from his MCL sprain has made him playing this weekend against the Tennessee Titans a possibility. While he was expected to miss multiple weeks, Love will be a game-time decision for Sunday’s game, Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said on Friday.
“He’s doing everything in his power,” LaFleur said on Love’s Week 3 status. “We’ll give it to game time.”
Love practiced Wednesday for the first time since suffering the injury during Green Bay’s season-opening loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. He was limited that day as well as during Thursday and Friday’s practices.
“There’s a lot of boxes (to check),” Love said of the recovery process. “What it feels like to take those drops, be in the live fire … the trainers are doing a good job of monitoring me and seeing how I’m doing and how I’m reacting to every play. They’ll be the ones to clear me when the time comes.”
Love said that, while being exclusively a pocket passer on Sunday isn’t realistic, he acknowledged that he doesn’t need to be able to do everything he can normally do in order to play.
Love was not medically cleared to play in Green Bay’s home opener this past Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts. With Love looking on, backup Malik Willis went 12 of 14 that included a touchdown pass in Green Bay’s 16-10 win. Willis was aided by a Packers rushing attack that gorged the Colts for 261 yards on 53 carries.
Love was initially expected to be out anywhere from 2-6 weeks, so his practice participation this week would suggest his return may be on the earlier side of said timetable. Green Bay (1-1) travels to face Tennessee (0-2) — Willis’ former team — before hosting NFC North division rival Minnesota (1-1) in Week 4. Green Bay will head to the West Coast to face the Rams (0-2) in Week 5 before returning home to host Arizona (1-1) and Houston (2-0) in consecutive weeks.
While Love is making progress, Willis is prepared to face his former team on Sunday if he is asked to do so. Willis was unceremoniously traded to the Packers this offseason after two seasons in Nashville.
“When I got traded, it was a little bit emotional,” Willis recently said of the situation. “I didn’t know how to feel. But with the season coming, I just had to flush all that. We can worry about it later, and just understand this season doesn’t wait on anybody. … This is a results-based business. That’s just what it is. I just continued to try to work until I got another opportunity and it just so happened it came (last) week.”
