Kristaps Porzingis quickly diffused a scary moment Friday night at TD Garden.
The Boston Celtics big man took an elbow to the face from Phoenix Suns wing Cody Martin while defending the paint in the fourth quarter of Friday’s matchup and started bleeding from his nose while lying on the hardwood.
Porzingis quickly got to his feet with a big smile, however, and started pumping up the home crowd as he walked toward the locker room with a trainer.
The cut on Porzingis’ nose required stitches, but while he didn’t return to the game– a 123-103 Celtics rout — he seemed to avoid any serious injury. That meant he was open to chiding from his teammates, and good friend Jaylen Brown happily obliged.
“I told KP, ‘The stitches can’t make you uglier than you already are,'” Brown joked in his 1-on-1 with Abby Chin after the game, as seen in the video player above.
Celtics big man Luke Kornet, meanwhile, got a rise out of watching Porzingis channel his inner wrestler by hyping up the crowd as blood streamed from his nose.
“I feel like for anyone to have just blood dripping down the middle of their face — kind of the whole wrestler persona, the UFC-type persona — I feel like KP was perfect for that,” Kornet said in an exclusive interview with Celtics Postgame Live.
Porzingis has always had a great relationship with the Garden crowd, and his ability to feed off their energy even while dealing with a bloody nose will only add to his legend in Boston.
The C’s are back in action Sunday at TD Garden against the Washington Wizards, with tip-off at 6 p.m. ET.
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