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Tim BontempsESPN
BOSTON — As Boston Celtics star Kemba Walker lay on the ground Friday night in Denver, he felt the same emotion his teammates and everyone else watching did: fear.
“It was a scary moment for myself,” Walker said after Boston’s shootaround Wednesday morning, before the Celtics faced the Brooklyn Nets at TD Garden. “When I was in the moment it was pretty tough to be in, obviously. I know it was scary for everybody.
“It was tough, but thank God I’m OK.”
Walker will return to the court against the Nets Wednesday night — barring a setback between shootaround and the game — for the first time since he ran head-first into teammate Semi Ojeleye‘s midsection in the second quarter of Friday’s loss in Denver. He then remained on the ground for several minutes, before eventually being stretchered off and taken to a local hospital for evaluation.
Walker has since cleared every test without issue, and every scan he’s had on his head, neck and back have come back clean. While everything turned out to be fine, he said the initial numbness that he felt in his hands was the thing that scared him the most.
“It went away pretty fast,” he said. “I think that’s what got me the most nervous when I was on the ground. But, yeah, it went away. They just wanted to make sure I was good, I was safe. So they kept me from moving and put me on a stretcher, obviously.
“But yeah like I said, thank God I’m OK and it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
It was bad enough, though, that Walker wound up sitting out Monday’s game here against the Sacramento Kings, snapping his personal consecutive games played streak at 158. As happy as Walker was that he was OK, he was that disappointed that the streak couldn’t continue.
“I was pissed about that,” Walker said. “I’m not gonna lie. I was really pissed about that. I wanted to play. I wanted to keep the streak alive. I can’t lie, I was pissed. But I guess it was gonna happen at some point.”
Walker admitted that, in the end, it made sense for him to take the extra couple of days to make sure he was all right before returning to the lineup.
He also said the Celtics gave him the choice as to whether or not he should play against the Kings.
“They left it up to me,” Walker said. “They left it up to me. I knew they wanted me to sit out a little bit, so I just said I was gonna sit out.”
In addition to Walker, the Celtics are also expected to get center Daniel Theis back on the court Wednesday after he, too, missed the game against the Kings with an illness.
One player who won’t be returning to the court Wednesday night is Kyrie Irving, as the former Celtics star was ruled out from playing on Brooklyn’s entire three-game road trip — against the Knicks and both his former teams, the Cavaliers and Celtics — last Friday.
Whenever Irving does make his return here, he will be met with a very ugly reception. But Celtics coach Brad Stevens said he holds no ill will toward Irving after the two years they spent working together.
“I don’t really think about it,” Stevens said of the potential reception Irving will receive whenever he returns here. “We’ve talked about it a lot. I’ve said it before, I enjoyed Kyrie. Kyrie had a great two years from a playing standpoint here. And since June I’ve really tried to focus on this year’s team after I studied last year’s team. I really haven’t thought about it.
“He’s a great player. We’ve talked many times about last year’s team didn’t achieve what we wanted to. There were a lot of factors in that. But the factor that doesn’t get mentioned is how good the competition was. The East was way better last year [than the year before], and we weren’t as good as we wanted to be. So it doesn’t take away from what he did here those two years. I wish him the best, I wish him good health, but I haven’t thought twice about tonight, or being more meaningful, or reactions, or any of that stuff.”