Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Celtics Await Word on Pierce's Injury

Looks like the foot injury Paul Pierce suffered last night is worse than it may have appeared. Pierce, who injured the foot when Washington's Caron Butler essentially jumped on Pierce's planted leg while diving for a loose ball, came back to play parts of the second and third quarters before Doc Rivers sat him down for the fourth.

The rumors started flying this afternoon, thanks to an NBA.com report that a league source said "it looked" like Pierce had a busted foot. That, combined with a Shelden Williams tweet -- "Man when it rains it pours!!! Yall find out what I mean soon!!!!!"* -- sure made it seem like the news was bad. But the team was quick to caution that they don't yet know the extent of the injury. Yahoo! Sports says that team officials told them the injury would keep Pierce out for the next couple of weeks (which probably means the foot isn't broken). Around 9 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Rich Levine of CSNNE.com wrote on his Twitter account that the team said that Pierce is suffering from a strained foot, and is day-to-day; this could easily be something the team released in order to buy some time. All afternoon, the line has been that the team would announce something Tuesday.

And so we wait, trying not to think about the consequences of the worst-case scenario; i.e., Pierce being out for the season. Such a diagnosis would surely end any realistic talk of Boston as title contenders for this season, and it could mean the premature breakup of the Big Three.

Gonna be a restless night.

* I ran out of [sic]s to use on that Shelden tweet. To the extent that a blogger can, I hate social media.

UPDATE: Yahoo! Sports has jumped on Levine's story and says team sources told them that Pierce would be back Sunday at the latest. I'm still waiting for something official. I've got this from the team site, which confirms the strain and the day-to-day status, but I don't know when that went up. The news seems better than worse, though. -- 6:57 p.m. Pacific, 2/2/10

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