“He’s going to be out a couple of weeks, minimum,” Stevens said Sunday after practice.
“I just heard about it,” said Celtics wing Evan Turner. “That’s definitely tough. In general, Jae’s playing so great. He plays the bulk of the minutes for us, and defensively and the versatility that we have with him on the floor, it’s definitely tough. So the biggest thing is just getting him healthy. We’ve got a lot of capable guys, guys that have stayed ready throughout this process. So they’ll have an opportunity to play.”
Welp… that sucks. The Celtics have a tenuous grasp on the third seed at the moment and a stretch of games that includes the Pacers, Raptors (twice), Thunder, and Clippers. The C’s are only two games ahead of the 6-th seeded Hawks and 3.5 ahead of Indiana… so losing Crowder now is a little scary. A stumble in this tough stretch could see the Celtics drop significantly in the playoff seeding. And with just 16 games left in the regular season, there isn’t much time to make up any lost ground when Crowder comes back.
This is a critical stretch. Someone is going to have to step up… or else the C’s could see themselves facing Toronto in a first round matchup rather than a second round series.
