Pierce and Szczerbiak injured

TORONTO -- Before last night's 106-102 loss to the Raptors, Celtics coach Doc Rivers happily remarked how his team finally seemed fairly healthy again. Rivers should have known better than to make such a pronouncement, or at least knock on wood after he did.

Paul Pierce and Wally Szczerbiak suffered injuries in the defeat and both will be reevaluated by team medical personnel today. Pierce bruised his right elbow after a hard fall on a drive to the basket with 5:24 remaining in the third quarter . And shortly before the final buzzer, Szczerbiak landed awkwardly in pursuit of an offensive rebound and sprained his left ankle.

The Celtics have two days before they face the Bulls in Chicago. The status of Pierce and Szczerbiak is uncertain.

"It is sore and it has swelled up and is similar to the injury I had last year, so we will just have to wait and see," said Pierce (19 points, nine assists ), who severely bruised his left elbow last season and had surgery in August to repair minor damage. "I just fell right on it and it is a little sore right now. I'll give it a couple days' rest and see how it feels. I will have the doctor look at it."

Rivers was impressed Pierce played the remainder of the game with an injury to his shooting arm.

"Paul thought his arm was broke when he came to the timeout [with 1:46 left in the third quarter]," said Rivers. "I said, 'Do you want to come out?' He said, 'No.' I was thinking, 'Well, he's going to shoot lefthanded, I guess.' But he was great. He moved the ball. It was a shame because he had three or four shots and you could see he didn't want to take them with the distance and with his arm. That obviously hurt us. He told me he got to the basket with one layup he missed and he didn't want to extend [his arm] because he was worried about it. But I give him an A for great effort. He tried to do it."

Szczerbiak (12 points) finished the game sitting on the floor, clutching his ankle. After a minute, he limped off the court.

"It swelled up real good after I just iced it in the ice bucket, so we'll just have to see," he said. "It's a sprained ankle and I don't know anything yet [about when I can play]."

When the Celtics take the practice court this morning in Chicago, it could be another one of those workouts when Rivers doesn't have enough bodies. Not a good scenario for a team in need of quality practice time.

Rivers spared no amount of praise when it came to the energy provided by the second unit, particularly Brian Scalabrine. While guarding Chris Bosh aggressively, Scalabrine scored 5 points, including a 3-pointer in the third quarter.

"Scal was phenomenal," said Rivers. "Scal was the only guy on our team that could guard Chris Bosh. That's a joke. Chris Bosh is a great player, so I'm not taking anything away from him. I'm just saying someone else on our team besides the smallest big on our team should be able to guard him. I didn't want to take him off the floor."

Putting on a general manager's hat, Rivers mused about possible future trades. The topic came up when he was asked about the difficulty of coaching a young team with a lot of new faces. "If it was easy, a lot of young teams would be winning," he said. "If it all does come together, it would be a great feeling. Obviously, at some point down the road, we're probably going to have to add a veteran. Not this year, maybe. Maybe next year and use some of your youngs to do that." . . . With a contract guaranteed for the remainder of the season and $312,718 in salary coming his way, Allan Ray spent some extra time on the court during warm-ups. He worked with assistant coach Armond Hill, knowing it would be another night on the inactive list once the game started. But Ray soon could see some playing time in the Development League. "I was very happy with that news," said Rivers of the decision to keep Ray when the Celtics had the option to waive him by yesterday. "Danny [Ainge] and I think he's going to be a player someday and we don't want him to be that somewhere else." When asked about Ray going to the D-League, Rivers added: "I think that could happen. Right now, we need enough guys to have a practice, so we're not sending anyone down."