NEW YORK — For the Celtics to have any chance of overcoming Jayson Tatum’s potentially devastating lower leg injury and advancing in the NBA playoffs, they’ll need Kristaps Porzingis to play to his difference-making potential.
Porzingis has not looked like the same player this postseason, however, amid symptoms from a long-running viral illness that have left the big man exhausted and confused.
After the Celtics lost to the New York Knicks 121-113 on Monday to fall behind 3-1 in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals, Porzingis explained the toll the illness has taken on his body.
“At first, early on it happened whenever I would really push it,” he said inside the visitors’ locker room at Madison Square Garden. “Even as soon as I got sick, I was preparing myself for the Lakers game (on March 8). I don’t know if you guys remember, but we had the Lakers game, big TV game. I went really hard the day before, and right after that, I was knocked out. Like, I could not move. And it’s been kind of like this. Some days, even though I go really hard, I’m OK. But sometimes, leading up to the second series, I did everything perfect — rest, nutrition, this — and just in the first game it hit me.
“Sometimes it makes sense, and this time, it didn’t make sense. So it completely caught me off guard, and I just had to deal with it as it came. It’s weird, weird, weird, honestly. Super weird. But I’m happy now I’m feeling better again, and I just have to stay on top of everything: nutrition and all these simple things and then some of the things that are working for me right now, I have to keep doing those.”
Porzingis missed eight straight games in late February and early March. He returned to action on March 15 and resumed close to his usual workload as the regular season wound down, but his effectiveness and availability cratered once the playoffs began.
Though the 7-foot-2 center has seen action in all nine of Boston’s postseason games, he’s averaged just 23.0 minutes per appearance (down from 28.8 during the season) and has been alarmingly inefficient. Porzingis ranks last among all Celtics rotation players in both field-goal percentage (33.3%) and 3-point shooting percentage (13.6%) and has turned in seven single-digit scoring performances. He had just one during the regular season, topping 15 points in 36 of his 42 outings.
Before Game 3 on Saturday, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Porzingis had received IVs and immune boosters to combat his symptoms but still was “essentially waking up every day hoping and praying that he feels better.”
“Some days I could sleep 12 hours, no problem, honestly,” said Porzingis, who came off the bench in Boston’s last three games. “It’s super weird. Heavy fatigue, heavy fatigue, just in my muscles. I’ve tried to do everything perfect, put the best gasoline in my body, hoping I’d recover. Some days it was just sleeping all day — not all day, but sleeping all nights, going to bed early because the energy just wasn’t there. Super weird for me, and (I’d) never experienced this in my life. But, yeah, it’s a new experience for me now.”
Porzingis had another uneven performance in Game 4 (2-for-6, seven points, four rebounds, one steal in 24 minutes) but said he felt healthier than he did earlier in the series.
“Tonight was the first time I felt decent, honestly,” he said. “Just everything. My energy, I was more, like, uplifted, and maybe didn’t have my best game anyway, but my energy was good, and I felt like I could go a bit more up and down, so that was a positive.”
With Tatum, who was set to undergo an MRI on Tuesday to determine the severity of his serious-looking lower leg injury, potentially sidelined for the rest of the postseason and beyond, the Celtics will need to rely on his supporting cast as they look to overcome their daunting series deficit and extend their bid for back-to-back NBA championships.
Even with Tatum, they would face long odds of advancing. Of the 293 teams in NBA history that have trailed 3-1 in a playoff series, just 13 completed successful comebacks (4.4%). No club has achieved that feat since 2020, and the last to do so in a non-bubble setting was the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
“We have the talent,” Porzingis said. “We have a lot of talent. Even with JT out, even me maybe playing 10-15 minutes, we have the guys, and we’ve shown in the past that we can play still really good basketball. Obviously, there’s no replacement for this guy, no? Like, this is a big hit for us, 100%. But again, we have to play with the hand we’re dealt right now, and this is it. Going forward, maybe not, maybe not. Who knows? I don’t know. But we’re going to play with what we have.”