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Tony Allen out

Email|Link|Comments (1) Posted by Gary Dzen, Boston.com Staff December 3, 2008 06:49 PM

Celtics guard Tony Allen is out for tonight's game with a sprained right ankle. Allen twisted the ankle during Monday's game against Orlando but continued to play on it.

"When I came back in, I think I put a lot more pressure on it," Allen said. "I didn't want to go down. But I woke up that next morning and I could barely walk.

Allen said he plans to get treatment on the ankle tonight, as well as tomorrow morning, in hopes that he can play Friday (trainer Ed Lacerte told Doc Rivers that Allen might not be back until Sunday). Allen said he will have a precautionary MRI on the ankle sometime before Friday.

"With the little things I do out there, I need to be at full strength," Allen said.

With Allen out, Rivers said he was faced with a serious dilemma in his backcourt.

"If you lose one of those guards, there's a hole," said Rivers. "We're going to have to go small with Rondo and [House] or [Pruitt]...That's a problem."

The Pacers are in the midst of a four-game stretch in which they play the Lakers, Celtics, Cavaliers, and Celtics again. Indiana coach Jim O'Brien, however, said he hasn't been fretting this brutal run.

"I really didn't know about that until about a week ago, maybe two or three days ago," O'Brien said. "It's not something I really worried about...As Larry Bird says, you've got to play 82 games. You've got to play people in your conference 3 or 4 times and the people out west twice. However it falls, you've got no control over it."

Rivers had high praise for Pacers forward Danny Granger before the game.

"I think he started seeing last year that it was his team," said Rivers. "Now he's taking it to a different level. He's an All-Star."

Celtics guard Ray Allen said he had a friend in Mumbai, India during the recent terrorist attacks there. Allen said he was in contact with his friend, who was staying at one of two targeted hotels in the city, throughout the ordeal.