A new injury sidelined Jrue Holiday for the Celtics’ marquee matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The starting guard was ruled out for Friday’s game at TD Garden with a mallet finger injury on his right (shooting) hand. Boston also ruled out center Kristaps Porzingis with an illness for the second time in three games.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla described Holiday’s status as “day to day” and said the 34-year-old is “just managing the pain.”
“When he can manage the pain, he’ll be ready to play,” Mazzulla said in his pregame news conference.
The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons defines mallet finger as “when an object hits the tip of the finger or thumb (and) the force of the blow causes a tear near the insertion of the extensor tendon at the last joint of the digit” — in essence, a severely jammed finger that prevents a person from straighting the outermost knuckle. The recovery time varies based on the severity of the injury. Most do not require surgery, but AAOS recommends a splint “be worn full time for 6 to 8 weeks.”
There are examples of NBA players playing through mallet finger injuries, including Oklahoma City’s Luguentz Dort, who suffered one in a game this past November and played two nights later. Dort has missed just four games for the Thunder this season but wore a splint/wrap on his injured pinky finger until early February.
“It was just hard for me to shoot,” Dort said in early December, the The Oklahoman. “That was the main thing. I felt like I got off to a great start on that side of the floor. And it was just hard for me to shoot the ball with four fingers, basically.”
Holiday’s shooting percentages already were way down this season — he’s making 34.2% of his 3-pointers, a steep drop from his career-best 42.9% mark in 2023-24 — so that’ll be worth monitoring once he’s able to get back on the floor. He also has dealt with a lingering shoulder injury that sidelined him for the final four games before the NBA All-Star break.
Holiday played 31 minutes in Wednesday’s 117-97 loss to the Detroit Pistons, going 2-for-10 from the field and 0-for-5 from three and remaining in the game until Mazzulla pulled his starters with 4:40 remaining.
As for Porzingis, Mazzulla simply said the starting big man was “sick.”
Porzingis was a last-minute scratch ahead of Tuesday’s win in Toronto, with the team first downgrading him to doubtful and then ruling him out due to illness. He returned to the lineup against Detroit but played, in his words, “terrible” in the blowout loss, tallying 11 points and two rebounds and finishing as a team-worst minus-24. The Celtics removed him from their injury report Thursday before downgrading him on Friday.
The Celtics did receive reinforcements in the form of Jaylen Brown and Luke Kornet, who both were upgraded from questionable to available before tipoff against the Cavs. Brown sat out the Detroit game with a thigh contusion, and Kornet missed the last two for personal reasons.