What Danilo Gallinari's Injury Means For Boston Celtics
Representing their country in any competition or tournament is always on every NBA player’s bucket list, but teams and league executives hold their breath watching their guys play in non-NBA events due to the risk of injuries.
We recently saw Chet Holmgren suffer a Lisfranc injury in his right foot while playing at a Pro-Am event in Seattle and now, newly added Boston Celtics veteran forward Danilo Gallinari suffered a significant knee injury while representing Italy in the FIBA World Championship qualifying games.
Suffering a non-contact left knee injury, Gallinari did avoid a serious ACL injury, however, he was diagnosed with a torn left meniscus.
This is good news for the Celtics in the sense that Gallinari will not miss the entire 2022-23 season, but he will most definitely miss training camp at the end of September and it would be surprising if he was 100% ready to go for the start of the season.
Given his age and the fact that the Boston Celtics do not want to rush him back, it is very likely that Danilo Gallinari will not make his debut for Boston until sometime after the first month of the regular season.
The Celtics have also dealt with this kind of injury before, as Robert Williams III suffered a torn meniscus at the end of the 2021-22 season, forcing him to miss some time in the playoffs.
No timetable has been laid out yet for Danilo Gallinari and it is unknown if he will have surgery to repair this injury, but when Williams had surgery last season, he missed about a month of action.
Everyone is different and everyone’s body heals differently, which is why it is truly hard to say when Gallinari could be ready to go for Boston. The two biggest question marks right now in terms of when he will be able to play revolve around how severe the meniscus tear is and whether or not he will need to undergo some kind of a procedure to repair it.
The worst case scenario the Boston Celtics are looking at right now in regards to Gallinari’s injury is that he will not be ready to go until sometime in 2023, but that may not necessarily be the case.
Depth has been a big problem in Boston for quite some time now and while they did recently make the NBA Finals, their lack of overall depth showed in this series.
The addition of Danilo Gallinari proved to be a very big deal for Boston this offseason not only because he provides depth next to the likes of Jayson Tatum, Al Horford and Grant Williams at the forward positions, but he is a steady, experienced presence that understands his role.
For his career, Gallinari has averaged 15.6 points, 4.8 rebounds and has shot 38.2% from three-point range, giving the Celtics everything they need in terms of another scoring threat off-the-bench.
As of right now, this injury does not mean a whole lot for the Celtics, as they will continue to head into training camp looking to correct their wrongs from a season ago and get better in certain areas in order to make another Finals run.
However, Gallinari’s injury is going to be a big “elephant in the room” for this organization until they are able to evaluate his injury with their own medical staff and doctors. We should not expect the Celtics to look to replace the veteran right now, but should he be held out of action for longer than a month, we could see Boston look to make a move to add more depth out on the wing.
Grant Williams is more than capable of playing his role for Boston at either forward position and Sam Hauser is a young wing the team is high on because of his three-point shooting abilities. Look for both of these guys to see more minutes in the event that Gallinari is unable to go for the start of the 2022-23 season.
From a big picture point of view though and looking at the 2022-23 season as a whole, the Boston Celtics really dodged a bullet with Danilo Gallinari’s injury. There will be a cause for concern simply due to the fact that Gallinari is 34-years-old and has dealt with knee issues in the past, but a meniscus injury is a lot better than an ACL tear.
Gallinari will be good-to-go at some point this upcoming year for the Celtics, yet his status for the first game and month of the new season is very much in doubt at this point.
