Marcus Smart may not be back for another week or two
BOSTON -- It may be a while before we see Marcus Smart take the floor for the Celtics again. Smart, who missed his second straight game with a right ankle injury on Tuesday night, said he may not be back for a few weeks.
Smart wants to be cautious with this injury, which he suffered last Saturday in Toronto. He had to be helped off the court after he collided with Toronto's Gary Trent Jr., and revealed ahead of Tuesday's game in Miami that he reaggravated a previous injury that he suffered during the Eastern Conference Final against the Heat last summer.
"I got the bone bruise on the outside, but now I'm dealing with the bone bruise on the inside as well," Smart told Souichi Terada of MassLive. "Some scar tissue that was there. That's really it. So we're just taking it one day at a time."
With that, Smart is going to take it slow and make sure he heals up before returning. He said he'll be out for a "week or two" because he doesn't want to come back too soon, and then have the issue flare up at an even more important time of the season.
"It sucks," he said. "You're a competitor and you want to be out there, be out there with your team. But the depth that we do have is definitely going to help to be able to give me that rest and that time to heal. You're thankful for that."
The Celtics have the bodies to lose the reigning Defensive Player of the Year for the time being, with Derrick White getting the nod as the team's starting point guard and Payton Prichard coming up big off the bench. It was much more difficult on Tuesday night though, with Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Malcolm Brogdon all missing from the Boston backcourt in a loss to the Heat.
The Celtics have 10 more games ahead of the All-Star break. With the timetable he provided Tuesday, Smart may miss the bulk of those, and could potentially sit out until play resumes after the break on Feb. 23.
It's never ideal for a team to lose its starting point guard, but Smart's playmaking and defense is much more valuable come playoff time.
