ATLANTA — Avery Bradley wouldn’t rule out his chances of returning in this Eastern Conference first-round series, but he also admitted he heard his right hamstring pop in the fourth quarter of the Celtics’ 102-101 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in Game 1.
Bradley teammates seem to be dreading the injury more. Marcus Smart referred to the injury as losing a brother, and Jae Crowder seemed particularly discouraged.
“A hamstring is nothing to play with,” Crowder said. “He’s a fast type of guy, so he needs his hamstrings as much as possible. I don’t know how serious it is.”
Bradley’s hamstring led a laundry list of injuries, from a sprained index finger for Smart to a tweaked right shoulder that kept Kelly Olynyk out of the second half.
“We took one with Avery,” Crowder said. “The rest of those guys will be able to play, but we don’t know about Avery. We have a great medical staff and we’ll handle that as appropriate, but the other guys will be fine. We’ll take precautionary measures with treatment.”
Said Smart: “Obviously seeing him go down like that hurts our team. We lost a brother. But we’ve got players that can step up and are going to have to step up. We’re going to miss Avery, but we’ve got other guys on the team that can play just as well, so it’s time for them to step up.”
Bradley left the locker room using a cane.
“I just want to try to get treatment and take it day-by-day and hope that I can be back for the next game,” said Bradley, who expects to have an MRI taken of the hamstring today. “I’ll get treatment tonight. Probably get treatment all night. My main focus is just trying to get back for the next game. I’ll be fine. Once I get some treatment. I know Ed (Lacerte, the C’s trainer) and those guys, they’ll do a great job trying to get me back as soon as possible. I’m not worried at all. I have faith. And I know teammates and people are praying for me, hoping that I can get back as soon as possible.”
Valuable time
Smart lost track of the game clock at a particularly unfortunate time, with 36 seconds left and the Celtics trailing by three points. He fouled Kent Bazemore, who hit both free throws to give Atlanta a 98-93 lead.
“Really I was trying to go over, to just play defense because I saw that we were at a disadvantage on a fast break,” Smart said. “I was just trying to get back and didn’t know the time. I wasn’t really paying attention to it. Last time I checked I thought the time was lower than 24, but I made a costly mistake. It’s something I have to learn form. As a guard you have to know time and score and everything like that. And that was one of the plays that kind of hurt our team. We didn’t need to foul down three with about 36 seconds left. It was costly. I’m not saying that cost us the game, but at the time, the moment, it was costly. And just something I have to learn from.”
Thomas signs off
Focus has never been an issue for Isaiah Thomas, but in that constant search for an edge, he has done something radical. Thomas has taken the advice of Los Angeles Clippers star Chris Paul and turned off social media for the players.
“Man, I’m just trying to really lock in and have no distractions,” Thomas said before Game 1. “Social media, you can have a big game and they love you; have a bad game, they’ll tear you apart. I just want the least amount of distractions for myself. And just try to really lock in and stay in the moment. (Paul) hit me about it, the things he do come postseason. I just wanted to follow suit. Like I said, just take away all the distractions and just try to stay in the moment and worry about this series and worry about this team.”
As Thomas has already discovered, the process of digital detox is easier said than done, though he had another distraction at hand.
“I got my kids in town,” he said. “They occupy me enough. I might be tempted (to look at Twitter) later on. Probably tomorrow when we don’t have a game. Just gotta stay in the moment.”
Thomas was the game’s high scorer with 27 points. He was 4-for-10 shooting 3’s (8-for-21 overall) and had eight assists.
Turner under attack
Maybe Evan Turner should think about boycotting Twitter for a while. The player who goes by the handle @thekidet has been awash in haters, most of them Miami Heat fans, following his comments about Goran Dragic last week.
In response to Dragic’s blind-side forearm to Smart, who immediately fell backward in one of his better flops of the season, Turner said, “That was a girl trying to be a man.”
The Twitter-sphere thus exploded.
“I said what I felt,” Turner said. “Not as if I attacked his manhood or anything.”
Except that in a way he did, right?
Turner expects the furor to blow over fairly quickly. He also doesn’t feel a pressing need to explain himself to Dragic.
“I never had a conversation with Dragic in my life,” he said. “If I were Dragic, I wouldn’t pay two cents to any of that, either. I respect Dragic’s game. . . . He’s a man, but it was a girly act, because people were trying to jump away. There was no scuffle. It was a situation where everything went overboard. When I looked up there were like 35 people on the court. But nobody was going to fight.”
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