Hooped Up

In what was a very unnessry play last night against the Pacers, Toni Allen threw down a dunk on a blown dead play and looks to have blown out his left knee.  Allen dropped to the floor and clutched his knee as he rolled on the parquet, and was helped off the floor by teammates.

Afterward, Allen’s teammates were down about the latest batch of injuries, but vowed to press on and stressed the need for unity.

“TA is real important to us now. To see him go down, it hurts,” said Al Jefferson. “I feel like this is a test from the basketball gods. We’ve just got to stick together.”

Allen appeared to be all but fully recovered from his last knee injury and had started to emerge as the Celtics’ emotional leader according to Rivers. Allen had seemingly taken the mantle as the team’s offensive leader as well; he’d scored 20-plus points in the team’s last six games, and had really become a focal point of the Celtics’ attack.