Al Horford, Grant Williams nearing return from health and safety protocols

If you’re a frequenter of Twitter, you might have noticed that Christmas Eve’s injury report from the Celtics was a five-tweet thread of bad news that included eight players out in the NBA’s health and safety protocols, four questionable, and another two questionable with nagging injuries. On Sunday, that list mercifully shrunk to three.

The headline heading into Minnesota tonight is that Al Horford is most likely available after missing the last five games. He was questionable on Saturday in Milwaukee and was eventually held out for conditioning. It’s also possible that we could see Grant Williams against the Timberwolves, too. He’s listed as questionable.

Notably, Dennis Schroder, Josh Richardson, Enes Freedom, and Aaron Nesmith are still out. Juancho Hernangomez and Jabari Parker returned on Saturday and both played significant minutes against the Bucks.

Due to all the absences, Boston has had to sign five players to 10-day hardship exception contracts to fill out their roster. Two of those players, Justin Jackson and C.J. Miles, are unfortunately still in the protocol. Joe Johnson is available and Al-Farouq Aminu and center Norvel Pelle were signed on Christmas.