Celtics' Kristaps Porzingis injury timetable gets Joe Mazzulla update before 24-25 season
09/13/2024 01:47 PM
Fresh off their 18th championship in team history, the Boston Celtics will be on the hunt for back-to-back titles when the 2024-25 NBA season begins. With Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Boston’s entire core group back, it is clear to see why this team is once again the favorite to win the 2025 NBA Finals. However, Kristaps Porzingis won’t be healthy for the start of the season after undergoing offseason surgery to address his torn retinaculum and dislocated posterior tibialis tendon injury that he suffered in Game 2 of the 2024 NBA Finals.
At the end of June, the Celtics announced that Porzingis underwent successful surgery and would resume basketball activities in five-to-six months, meaning that he would miss at least the first month of the 2024-25 season.
Joe Mazzulla addresses Kristaps Porzingis’ injury timeline
With the start of training camp right around the corner, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla recently spoke with Steve Aschburner of NBA.com about where Porzingis was at in his recovery and what the star big man’s availability will look like as the team begins their quest for another championship.
“No timetable yet. But he's progressing,” Mazzulla told Aschburner when asked about Porzingis’ return from surgery. “Meeting all his checkpoints. Working hard to get back. He takes a lot of pride in doing the best he can to be available. You saw that in Game 5 when he came back and really gave us a spark.”
Although Porzingis suffered this rare leg injury in Game 2 of the 2024 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, he was able to return in some capacity for the series-clinching Game 5 victory. Porzingis played 16 total minutes in this contest, scoring just five points on 2-of-4 shooting off the bench.
Despite not being healthy, Porzingis still geared up and played in this championship game for the Celtics, a decision that Mazzulla claims was made with a lot of heart.
“I think it was a little bit of everything,” Mazzulla continued. “He's a great teammate. It was heart. I think he has a mental toughness about him that he prides himself on developing. And it was an opportunity for us to succeed as a team and he wanted to be a part of that.”
The Celtics put together a dazzling 64-18 season last year in which they never truly faced adversity at any point. During the regular season, Boston never lost more than two straight games, and they only lost three total games en route to their championship over the Mavs.
While Porzingis being out to begin the year obviously limits the Celtics in some capacity, they still have plenty of talent across the board to ensure success. Tatum and Brown are still the main scoring weapons, and the secondary depth of Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Al Horford, and Xavier Tillman Sr. will still be enough to keep the Celtics at the top of the NBA standings.
Porzingis is still recovering from his surgery, and the Celtics are going to take his recovery process slower than other teams would in order to make sure he is 100 percent before returning.
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