Morning sports update: Brett Brown says Markelle Fultz is not ‘dead and buried’ for Celtics series
Craig Kimbrel blew a save opportunity for the first time in eight tries this season as the Royals beat the Red Sox 7-6 in 13 innings. The Bruins face the Lighting in Game 3 Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
Brett Brown says Markelle Fultz is not ‘dead and buried’ for Celtics series
The No. 1 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft did not play in Game 1 between the Celtics and 76ers, while the No. 3 pick, Jayson Tatum, put up 28 points. Philadelphia head coach Brett Brown said the decision to bench Markelle Fultz shouldn’t “shock anybody, given how we arrived and where we’ve arrived.”
“There are times where you for sure think about [playing Fultz],” Brown said Tuesday, per ESPN’s Ian Begley. “… But I got a decision to make, and I’ve made a decision. That doesn’t mean it’s etched in stone. It’s always something that you review and think about. And the care for Markelle Fultz and his future is always on my mind.”
Fultz missed 68 games with a shoulder injury, then returned in March for the final 10 games of the regular season. In the season finale, he became the youngest player in NBA history to record a triple-double. He played 24 minutes combined over the 76ers first three playoff games against the Miami Heat and has not appeared in the team’s past three games.
Brown said he decided to go with T.J. McConnell over Fultz because of McConnell’s performance during the regular season and in the first round, but said that it would be foolish to consider Fultz “dead and buried.”
“Markelle Fultz played 10 end-of-season games for the year, and T.J. played the whole year and had a helluva year and we won [16 in a row], and we were winning, we were playing good basketball…T.J. grabbed a spot and walked it down, we won a series,” Brown said.
“But it’s not anything that I’m not open to always reviewing. I’ll do whatever it takes to help [Fultz] help us. ‘Us’ being the key word.”
5 things we learned from Tom Brady’s appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference: In an interview with Jim Gray, Tom Brady spoke out about Bill Belichick, Malcolm Butler, and his status with the Patriots. Turns out, Brady was no more in the loop on Butler’s benching during Super Bowl LII than the rest of us.
“I didn’t know,” he explained. “Malcolm kept coming over to me during the game and was like ‘Come on, TB, let’s go.’ And I kept going, ‘What defense are we in where Malcolm’s not on the field?’ Is it short-yardage, goal line? Then after the game, I found out. So I just didn’t know.” (Boston.com)
Why the 5th-place woman in the Boston Marathon didn’t get $15,000: Jessica Chichester placed fifth in the 2018 Boston Marathon, but the 31-year-old nurse from Brooklyn, New York, won’t be receiving the $15,000 in prize money that goes to the fifth-place woman. And she’s not alone. Here’s why the BAA stipulates that prize money is only awarded to women who start the marathon in the group of runners with the fastest qualifying times. (Boston.com)
This former Celtics star retired to Hawaii, grows his own weed, and plays poker with Owen Wilson: Don Nelson won five championships with the Celtics in the 1960s and 1970s before setting the NBA’s all-time record for regular-season wins as a coach. Since retiring in 2010, the Hall of Famer has grown a beard and his own name-brand marijuana, reconnected with a long-lost daughter, and started hosting poker games with Willie Nelson. (Boston.com)
Daily highlight:
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