125-117 win over the Toronto Raptors<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cEveryone always sees the shooting Sam does, but I think he\u2019s one of the better defenders that we have in his versatility defensively,\u201d Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said pregame. \u201cHe did a great job (Friday) night on (RJ) Barrett. He started on (James) Harden the other night. \u2026 He\u2019s just a well-rounded guy, and he can execute details really well on both ends of the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without Hauser, Minott \u2014 who fell out of Mazzulla\u2019s rotation before suffering his injury \u2014 and the rehabbing Jayson Tatum, the Celtics\u2019 wing options against San Antonio were Jaylen Brown, Hugo Gonzalez, Jordan Walsh, Baylor Scheierman and two-way player Ron Harper Jr.<\/p>\n
Gonzalez replaced Hauser on the top unit, making his first start since Oct. 26 and just the second of his NBA career. The 19-year-old rookie has been highly effective off the bench this season, boasting the seventh-best total plus\/minus in the league since the start of December.<\/p>\n
On the other side, Victor Wembanyama came off the bench for the third straight game. The Spurs have been cautious with their franchise cornerstone since he returned from the knee injury that sidelined him for two games last week. Ex-Celtic Luke Kornet started at center for San Antonio.<\/p>\n
The Celtics and Spurs entered Saturday with the second-best records in the Eastern and Western Conference, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Celtics were down a pair of wings for their Saturday night matchup with the San Antonio Spurs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,6039,8952,73071,2675,7272,6,2080,73072],"class_list":["post-528532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boston-celtics","tag-basketball","tag-boston","tag-boston-celtics","tag-bostonceltics","tag-celtics","tag-celtics-injuries","tag-celtics-injury-report","tag-celtics-spurs","tag-joe-mazzulla","tag-josh-minott","tag-nba","tag-sam-hauser","tag-sam-hauser-injury"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115874377730969398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}