SACRAMENTO — Celtics forward Jayson Tatum missed Wednesday’s 144-119 destruction of the Kings due to the left ankle sprain he suffered during Boston’s overtime loss to the Warriors on Tuesday night. It’s the first game he has missed this season.
“He loves to play,” coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I’m sure he would do anything to play but it was obviously sore, obviously swollen. You could tell it limited him during the game. He did a good job of fighting through it, but it’s a day-to-day thing and we’ll see how it goes.”
With 7 minutes, 53 seconds left in the first quarter Tuesday, Tatum landed on the foot of Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski and rolled his ankle. He winced, and when there was a stoppage in play eight seconds later he jogged to the locker room with a noticeable limp.
Tatum returned to Boston’s bench late in the quarter and reentered the game to start the second. But the injury appeared to sap Tatum of some of his explosiveness. He was 2 for 3 from the field prior to the injury and just 3 for 14 after, finishing with 15 points. He missed all five of his shots in the fourth quarter and overtime.
“Not to make any excuses but when you sprain your ankle, it kind of swells up,” Tatum said. “Just stiff. It just makes it a little tougher to move. But I still was out there. So I feel like if you go out there and play, you can’t make any excuses.”
Al Horford, who has not played in back-to-backs this season, sat against the Kings on a scheduled rest day. Backup center Luke Kornet remained sidelined with an adductor strain. Center Kristaps Porzingis, who missed Tuesday’s game to manage his recent calf strain, returned to the starting lineup and scored 24 points with nine rebounds and six blocks..
Letting Curry cook
The Celtics appeared to be in a very good spot midway through the third quarter of the Golden State game. Jaylen Brown backed down Warriors star Stephen Curry and scored inside while drawing Curry’s fifth foul in the process.
The 3-point play gave Boston a 13-point lead, and Curry went to the bench for the rest of the quarter. But the Celtics were outscored by 2 points with Curry out, and when he returned to start the fourth quarter, Boston was unable to get him a sixth foul.
There can be dangers in hunting a specific matchup too aggressively. For example, opponents sometimes veer from their approaches to seek out perceived mismatches against Sam Hauser, and they stray from successful sets in the process.
But for a player of Curry’s stature, there was value in pursuing matchups against him more aggressively. He played the entire fourth quarter and all of overtime without picking up his sixth foul.
“They did a good job of hiding him and we were trying to put him in action,” Brown said. “I felt like if we were to just play instead of looking around, maybe we would have been able to attack. But we were trying to put him in certain actions and I think that kind of hurt us.”
Curry praised his teammates for providing help defense before he could be put in a tough spot. Tatum said the Celtics were trying to go after the star guard.
“Yeah, we knew he had five fouls,” he said. “So we just wanted to put pressure on their defense and pressure on the refs at that time. So, yeah, we were trying to do that.”
3-point bonanza
Derrick White appeared almost stunned when he looked down at the stat sheet after the Golden State game and saw that he had attempted a career-high 18 3-pointers.
“That’s crazy,” he said. “I didn’t know I took that many. But it felt like, for the most part, they were pretty good looks. I mean, the next game I might take two shots. Just understanding the flow of the game and I got good looks today. Wish I made a couple more.”
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.