Rick Carlisle sheds light on what makes Kristaps Porzingis a ‘tough guy’ despite his injury history
"The guy is a competitor."
Injuries are part of the Kristaps Porzingis experience.
The 7-foot-2 center missed Sunday’s game against the Pacers. It’s his second absence in a row, as he deals with a sprained ankle.
He missed the first 17 games of this season due to offseason ankle surgery, and he has missed at least that many every season except for his first two seasons with in the league with the Knicks.
But, according to Pacers coach Rick Carlisle who coached Porzingis for two seasons in Dallas, Porzingis’s injury history does not mean he lacks toughness.
Carlisle reflected on Porzingis’s approach towards his rehab processes before his Pacers squad took on the Celtics at TD Garden Sunday evening.
“Well, what I can tell you is that he’s a tough guy,” Carlisle said. “He’s a tough guy. He wants to play. He’s a tremendous practice player. He’s a great worker.”
“When you have a [7-foot-2] body like that, it’s going to present some challenges especially with the dynamic way that he plays,” Carlisle added. “He moves around the court like a guard. But, I’ll tell you this: The guy is a competitor.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said Porzingis is making strides in his recovery from his latest injury. Porzingis last played in the Celtics’ Christmas day loss to Philadelphia, during which he tweaked the ankle on an awkward step trying to drive past Joel Embiid early in the first quarter.
Porzingis attempted to play through the pain, running up and down the floor with a noticeable limp. He played 13 minutes and scored nine points before his night was finished.
“He’s getting better every day. He’s working at it,” Mazzulla said. “So we’ll just continue to see how he improves.”
Carlisle, who was a member of the Celtics’ 1986 championship team as a player before embarking on his lengthy coaching career, said seeing Porzingis win a title with the Celtics made him happy.
Porzingis’s time in Dallas did not go well. He played in just 108 of 246 possible regular-season games over the three seasons he was with the Mavericks.
He averaged north of 20 points and eight per game in two of the three seasons, but he tore his meniscus in the first round of the 2020 playoffs and Dallas never made it out of the first round during his time there. He was traded to Washington during the 2022 season.
Porzingis’s only full season in Washington was one of his healthiest. He played in 65 games and averaged 32.6 minutes per game.
He held up for most of last season with the Celtics, before missing the vast majority of the playoffs with a calf strain followed by a torn medial retinaculum allowing dislocation of the posterior tibialis tendon.
Although the ankle injury he suffered in last year’s NBA Finals eventually required offseason surgery, Porzingis made sure he was available for Game 5.
Porzingis was hobbled in that game too, but the Celtics won the game and clinched their NBA-record 18th title on the TD Garden parquet floor. Carlisle said that effort was an example of Porzingis’s toughness and and character.
“He’s a total team guy and whenever he has an injury he does everything in his power to get back as quickly as possible,” Carlisle said. “I was very surprised when he played in the deciding game last year. It just seemed like these guys without him were probably going to be OK anyways. But, you know, that’s just him.”
“He wants to play. He wants to help his team,” he added. “He wants to be a part of the team. I know it meant an awful lot for him to win a championship, and I’m super happy for him being able to for being able to experience that here.”
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