Category: Sports News

Mazzulla provides more clarity on Porzingis' illness, status for Game 3 originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

How much production can the Boston Celtics get from Kristaps Porzingis going forward?

That’s been a significant storyline during Boston’s second-round playoff series vs. the New York Knicks, and with good reason: Porzingis was excellent against his former team during the regular season but looked like a shell of himself in Games 1 and 2 due to an illness that limited him to fewer than 15 minutes in both contests.

The Celtics haven’t provided much detail on the nature of Porzingis’ illness — they termed it a “non-Covid illness” when he exited Game 1 in the second quarter — but head coach Joe Mazzulla shared a bit more insight Friday.

“We do know: He had the illness, and he has the effects of that illness when it’s his fatigue and his breathing, and he’s doing everything he can to give us what he has,” Mazzulla said during his interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand.

Porzingis missed 11 games in a 14-game span from late February to mid-March due to an upper respiratory illness, and it appears he’s still dealing with lingering effects of that illness, particularly in regard to his conditioning.

“It’s an illness, and what’s impacted is his fatigue and his breathing,” Mazzulla added. “So, he’s just working through those things.”

After going scoreless over 13 minutes in Game 1 prior to his departure, Porzingis looked a bit better in Game 2, playing 14 minutes and contributing eight points on 3 of 5 shooting. He’s still nowhere near full strength, though, and admitted as much to reporters after Wednesday’s Game 2.

“I’ve had ups and downs up until this point, and just now had a big crash,” Porzingis said. “My energy, my everything hasn’t been good.”

Still, Mazzulla is hoping that two full days off can help Porzingis rest up to contribute more minutes in Saturday’s Game 3.

“We hope that he’ll continue to get better and better with these two days off,” Mazzulla said. “We hope that he’ll be better, because we need him for us to be at our best.

“He’s in here every day; he’s doing what he can. I thought he gave us — those 13 or 14 minutes (in Game 2) were good, and hopefully we can build on that with a couple of days off.”

The Celtics need all they can get from Porzingis at the moment; they’ve gone 25 for 100 from 3-point range — an NBA record for the most missed 3s in a span of two playoff games — and are averaging almost 20 points below their regular-season scoring average as a team.

Porzingis is an offensive cheat code for Boston when healthy with his ability to hit 3-pointers and exploit mismatches in the post. Mazzulla sounds optimistic that Porzingis can increase his workload from Game 2 after two days off, but the big man’s health is still a major question mark entering Game 3.

Saturday’s game tips off at 3:30 p.m. ET, and NBC Sports Boston’s coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET with Celtics Pregame Live.

Timberwolves investigating ‘racially charged comments' at Draymond originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Draymond Green’s postgame comments raised some eyebrows after accusing the NBA of having an “agenda” against him following the Warriors’ Game 2 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday night at Target Center.

The Timberwolves on Friday morning released a statement that provided a bit more clarity on what occurred off the court that might have led to Green’s remarks.

Minnesota Timberwolves Statement on Fan Ejection: pic.twitter.com/vJvAqLSz7b

— Timberwolves PR (@Twolves_PR) May 9, 2025

A video shared to social media by a fan at the game showed Green going back and forth with a fan or fans while he was keeping warm on the stationary bike in the tunnel during the fourth quarter.

There has yet to be any more information on the second person referenced in the Timberwolves’ statement, but as they noted, they will continue to investigate the matter.

“I’m not an angry Black man,” Green told reporters after Golden State’s 117-93 loss. “I’m a very successful, educated Black man, with a great family. And I’m great at basketball. Great at what I do. The agenda to try to keep making me look like an angry Black man is crazy. I’m sick of it. It’s ridiculous.”

Green was assessed a technical foul in the second quarter for hitting Naz Reid in the face, but given his passionate postgame comments, there had to be more to the story.

Details of that might or might not unveil as time passes, but Green and the Warriors know their focus is on basketball.

Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast

Shams: Steph's injury return not until Game 6 ‘at the earliest' originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Steph Curry’s presence was missed in the Warriors’ Game 2 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference semifinals Thursday night at Target Center.

He will miss Games 3 and 4 at Chase Center before his Grade 1 left hamstring strain is reevaluated just before Game 5 on Wednesday returns to Minnesota. While Curry spoke to reporters before Game 2 and indicated he didn’t have a target return date, ESPN’s Shams Charania shared some more intel on the sharpshooter’s potential return timeline.

“It’s a hamstring strain. You know and everyone in there knows, a hamstring strain is not an injury you play with,” Charania said Friday morning on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “He’s really been limited to just doing treatment. … My understanding is it’s probably not going to be at any point until Game 6 at the earliest for Steph Curry.”

That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the Warriors, assuming they can win at least one game at home in either Game 3 or Game 4. Obviously, you want to win as many games as you can, but if a rested and healthy Curry returns to Game 6 in San Francisco, you at least give yourself a chance to force a Game 7.

Curry sustained the injury early in the second quarter of Game 1 and immediately was ruled out for the remainder of the contest. The injury is the first muscle strain of Curry’s 16-season NBA career, but hamstring injuries specifically require extra need for caution.

“It’s going to be a very safe approach the Warriors are going to take with this,” Charania added.

"Steph Curry has really been limited to just doing treatment and he's gonna be reevaluated on Wednesday..

My understanding is that he could be back for game six at the earliest" ~ @ShamsCharania#PMSLivepic.twitter.com/ppvbo0zAgn

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) May 9, 2025

There is a four-day gap between Games 5 and 6 due to the WNBA Golden State Valkyries opening their season at Chase Center on Friday, May 16. Game 5 is scheduled for May 14. Game 6, if needed, is scheduled for May 18.

Of course, this could all change depending on how the series shakes out. The Warriors stepped up massively when Curry left with the injury in Game 1. They folded in a Game 2 blowout loss. The series now heads to the Bay tied 1-1.

All eyes will be on Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green to put the team on their backs in Curry’s absence. Because if and when he returns, the basketball world knows it’s a whole different ball game.

Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast

Raise a glass to Gregg Popovich, the gruff teddy bear who lifted the San Antonio Spurs into the NBA’s elite. After three decades on the Spurs’ sideline, he is stepping back from coaching to become the team’s president of basketball operations. It’s a back-to-the-future move for the 76-year-old: he was the Spurs’ general manager for eight years before he became the team’s coach. (“I’m no longer the coach, I’m El Jefe,” Popovich jokingly declared this week before unveiling a T-shirt with that Spanish title.) Altogether, Pop won five NBA championships from 1999 through 2014, a run that puts him among the greatest coaches in league history. But when it came to being the NBA’s unflinching statesman, he was in a league all by himself.

Popovich wasn’t just the NBA’s backbone. He was, perhaps, the most fearless truth teller in all of sport. Certainly no one was bolder when it came to taking on Donald Trump – whom Popovich has described as a “soulless coward,” a “pathological liar” and a “deranged idiot”. Popovich told beat reporters he was “sick to my stomach” after Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, a tipping point he likened to the fall of Rome. He slammed Steve Bannon’s appointment as chief White House strategist as a fear-mongering exercise. During the Spurs’ 2017 media day, Popovich launched into a 21-minute condemnation of Trump and the Maga movement after the president attacked NFL players and Nascar’s Bubba Wallace for their national anthem protests. “Our country is an embarrassment to the world,” Popovich said. “This is an individual that when people held arms during games, [he thought] that they were doing it to [dis]honor the flag. That’s delusional. But it’s what we have to live with.”

Related: From Brunson to Ant-Man: the players who have defined a wild, brilliant NBA postseason

Whenever the stakes were highest culturally and politically, Popovich was the coach you could most count on notto stick to sports. During the NBA’s celebration of Black History Month in 2018, Popovich held forth on the subject of systemic racism and acknowledged his own white privilege. “If you were born white, you automatically have a monstrous advantage – educationally, economically, culturally, in this society,” he said. “It’s a tough one because people don’t really want to face it.”

Through it all, he maintained a wry sense of humor. When reporters questioned the Spurs’ losing streak in 2019, Popovich used it as an opportunity to indirectly criticize Trump. “Whoever started the rumor that we’re losing these games, it didn’t happen,” he joked. “It’s a witch-hunt. I see treasonous behavior. I see spies. They’re all sick.”

Popovich follows in a rich NBA coaching tradition of speaking out that started when Boston’s Red Auerbach used his considerable power to knock down barriers for Black players. And when Popovich began speaking out against Trump, he didn’t lack support from his peers. Stan Van Gundy, the former Detroit Pistons coach turned broadcaster, called out Trump’s “misleading” anthem protest attacks in a Time Magazine op-ed. Golden State’s Steve Kerr, a key player on two of Pop’s championship teams, echoes Popovich’s outrage on all things Trump and Trump-adjacent. Mike Budenholzer supported a player-led decision to boycott a 2020 playoff game in protest at the police shooting of Jacob Blake while coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, sparking a wave of walkoffs across US sports.

But where Van Gundy and Budenholzer are respected for their opinions outside the game because of their stature in it, and Kerr – whose father was murdered while serving as president of the American University of Beirut – is blood-bound to rebuke immorality in all its forms, it hits different when Popovich enters the chat because he comes from a background that chimes with many conservatives in America. Popovich played college basketball at the Air Force Academy in the 1960s and was the team’s captain and leading scorer his senior year. After graduating with a degree in Soviet studies and serving his required five years, he considered a career in the CIA before starting his coaching journey as an Air Force assistant in the early 1970s.

When Peter Holt bought the Spurs in 1993, one of his first moves was to bring back Popovich as general manager. (Pop got his NBA start with the Spurs in the late 80s, as the right hand to coaching legend Larry Brown.) Popovich helped realize the NBA’s global ambitions and organized his rosters around Frenchman Tony Parker, Argentina’s Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan – a competitive swimmer from the US Virgin Islands who retired as the game’s greatest power forward.

Popovich’s coaching style wasn’t always appreciated in its heyday, before the current 3-and-D era took hold. Casual fans dismissed the Spurs’ dogmatically unselfish brilliance, the apogee of Brown’s play-the-right-way ethos, as a bore even as San Antonio piled up the victories – first with Naval Academy hero David Robinson, then Duncan, then perennial All-Star swingman Kawhi Leonard. And while Popovich was hard on his players – not least Duncan (who was frequently made an example of for the greater good) and may have cost himself more rings by losing his patience with Leonard (whose frequent injuries and sporadic availability proved frustrating), the coach’s compassion won out more often than not.

Stories abound of Pop’s personal touch. He might scold a reporter, Bill Belichick-style, but he also might help that same reporter land another job if his newspaper suddenly folded, or support another through his cancer fight. (Even a question as simple as How are you doing? might elicit a sincere response from Pop.) He was quick to wisecrack in his own huddle and break the tension on court. LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Steph Curry wouldn’t have started the league’s wine obsession without Popovich – the NBA’s king oenophile – breaking out his rare bottles for boozy Team USA dinners. (“He would always come around the table and tell everybody what the wine was that he was serving that evening,” Kerr said in a 2000 interview, recalling the Spurs team dinners. “It became a point of real connection between Pop and the players.”) Popovich liked to joke that the best wines in his collection were older than Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio’s current French phenom.

But during the team’s exhibition trip to Paris earlier this year, Wembanyama hosted the boozy team dinner while Popovich stayed back in the US to recover from a stroke that would eventually lead to his stepping down. After suffering another health scare last month, Popovich fully relinquished his coaching duties. As much as it smarts to not see him go for a sixth title with Wembanyama after keeping the Spurs fighting during fallow times, it just means Popovich can finally get to work on what would be his boldest statement yet: installing Becky Hammon as the NBA’s first female head coach.

Hammon, who was on Pop’s staff for seven seasons, has been dodging succession rumors for years. “My heart’s a little heavy for him because I know how much he loves it, but I’m sure he’ll crush this role just as much,” says Hammon, a championship-winning coach with the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. “He’s a huge reason why I have this job.” (Don’t hold your breath on Hammon as the Spurs’ next coach, though: she went on to say she is “super happy” in the WNBA, but wouldn’t rule out a return to the NBA down the line.)

History will remember Popovich as one of sport’s all-time winners – the notable coach who beat super-squads built by Phil Jackson and Pat Riley. Meanwhile, the head coaching success of Hammon (two WNBA titles), Kerr (four NBA titles), and Budenholtzer (one, with Milwaukee in 2021) as well as former assistants Ime Udoka (Houston) and Will Hardy (Utah) speaks volumes to Pop’s wider impact in the game as a mentor. But Popovich’s ultimate legacy as a league statesman stands for all time and leaves a void that even Kerr, his chief envoy, will struggle to fill. But then again who knows if Kerr will even have to? While Popovich may be stepping back from the sideline, one expects his voice will still resonate simply because there’s no chance of him simply sticking to sports. Not with the stakes still so high.