Today's news is centered around Pierce's stress reaction and the lack of live bodies on the Celtics at this point. This could have a silver lining. With Pierce, Wally, and Perk out, it will force some of our young guys to step up. That being said, here is what is going on around the Celtics nation today.

Mark Murphy reports that the pain finally caught up to Pierce forcing him to miss the next 2-3 weeks. He also has an article that reports that the Celtics youngsters have an open door right now with injuries to Pierce and Wally. Roles are changing and it will be interesting to see how they respond when given the keys and the playing time.

The Globe also reports that injuries are adding up with Pierce being just the latest. They are blaming the injury for Pierce's inability to push off and get a shot off in the last game. It is fortunate that they caught it before it became a stress fracture, which could have ended his season.

Bob Ryan presents a very good case for why Philly is about to get worse. In the past, when a team has traded a superstar, they weren't able to rebound afterwards. My guess is that Philly is fine with that for this season so that they can win the Oden derby.

The Green Room makes a point that we all have said at one time or another and that is that the Celtics have relied too much on Pierce in clutch situations. It has been give Pierce the ball and 4 guys stand around and watch him work. With Pierce out, we are going to see some other players have to step up. It will be interesting to see which ones do. Last year, Gomes took advantage of injuries to break out. Will it be Green this year? We are about to find out. Stay tuned.

The Metro West Daily repeats the theme that Doc is desperate for live bodies that can stand on two feet. Pierce is out 2-3 weeks, Wally is out for at least another week and possibly more. Perk hopes to come back sometime on the West coast trip, Kandi is trying to come back but still sore. Scal has the flu. Ratliff is out indefinitely. Some of our young guys have to step up as we play 7 of our next 8 games on the road.

The Patriot Ledger reminds us that we get Iverson on our road trip. Just when we thought that the basketball gods were smiling down on us with the suspension to Melo, the clouds come over again and we will be facing an Allen Iverson who is determined to make Philly sorry they traded him without Pierce in our own lineup. Maybe the basketball gods want us to have Greg Oden.

In another piece, The Patriot Ledger reports that Big Al put the blame on himself for the loss to the Warriors. Many commentators were mentioning that Al's substandard game came right after Iverson was traded and he wasn't in immediate danger of a trade himself. I don't think that is a factor. It is more like that he is still young and will have ups and downs but hopefully from now on, the ups are going to be more often than the downs.

The depleted Celtics face the depleted Sixers tonight at the TD Banknorth Garden. Even without Pierce, we should win this one since Philly has been pretty much tanking. But they may surprise us if we take them for granted, especially since we are without our two top scorers. Philly can still be a dangerous team with Igoudala and Korver so hopefully we will come out strong and play for 48 minutes and win this one before we go out on the road with our kiddie corps. Join us on Celtics Green for the play by play tonight. NOTE: The game was originally scheduled for ESPN but they removed it when Iverson was suspended from the Sixers. At first it wasn't on the LP schedule but now it is showing up on League Pass as NBA 6. Since it was originally to be on ESPN, there will be a late start at 8:00 pm.