But when he’s open, his teammates are confident he can score.

“He seems to always be in the right spots, available,” Pierce said after Bass scored 20 points to lead the Celtics to a 107-96 win Sunday night. “That’s going to be huge for us if he continues to play well going into the playoffs, and the great thing about it is he’s doing it all off of the hustle plays.”

In the eight games Garnett missed with an inflamed left ankle, Bass averaged 12.3 points, raising his season average to 8.3. On Sunday, he shot 9 of 12 and added six rebounds.

“He’s just efficient,” Boston coach Doc Rivers said. “Overall, I think he’s playing terrific. I think he’s in a wonderful place right now.”

Garnett had 12 points and six rebounds in 24 minutes. Pierce finished with 15 points in 30 minutes after missing Friday night’s 97-91 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers with a sore left ankle.

“Things flow a lot smoother when Kevin and Paul are out there because everything’s being run through them and everybody else is just getting what they get from them,” Bass said. “So it’s a lot better when they’re out (on the court). It doesn’t matter if I get a play called. The ball will find me and, hopefully, I just make the shot.”

Bass missed his season high by just two points and led the Celtics with eight points in the third quarter, when they hit 75 percent of their shots, outscored Washington 31-19 and stretched a 56-52 halftime lead to 87-71.

They’re still missing Rajon Rondo and Jared Sullinger, both sidelined for the season, but led by at least 10 points the rest of the way to get just their fourth win in 12 games.

John Wall led Washington with 16 points but never got to the foul line as Boston outscored Washington 17-8 on free throws. A.J. Price had 15 points and Trevor Ariza added 14.

“We play a team like this and when you’re not playing great defensively you have got to be able to make shots,” Wall said, “and we had a tough night.”

The Wizards hit just 44.5 percent of their shots. But in the second half they connected on only 41.5 percent, while the Celtics made 64.5 percent.

“It doesn’t matter what lineup (we use) or who’s on the floor as long as we’re playing the right way,” Garnett said. “That’s all my concern is, just making sure that we’re sharing the ball, playing as a team, giving up for each other, playing defensively.”

The win ended a four-game stretch against weak teams in which the Celtics lost to Minnesota, beat Detroit, lost to Cleveland and beat Washington. With five games left and the Celtics trying to move up from seventh place in the Eastern Conference, the schedule gets tougher with a home game Wednesday night against the Brooklyn Nets before a road game Friday against the Miami Heat.

Washington fell to 7-31 on the road but is 23-20 overall since Wall returned from a shoulder injury.

“Against a team like this that’s playing for something, who has a seed in the playoffs, they’re going to keep competing,” Wall said. “And they got everybody back tonight and they were clicking right away.”

A dunk by Nene with 10:24 left in the third quarter had cut the Celtics’ lead to 58-57, but they went on a 29-14 surge the rest of the period.

The Celtics began the spurt with a 14-1 run, starting with a layup by Avery Bradley. Pierce hit another layup and Bradley followed with a 16-footer. Martell Webster sank a free throw for the Wizards after Garnett was called for a technical foul with 7:57 left in the quarter. But Emeka Okafor then missed two free throws for Washington.

Boston scored the next eight points on a 14-foot jumper by Bass, two free throws by Shavlik Randolph, an 18-footer by Jason Terry and a dunk by Bass.

Ariza then scored Washington’s first field goal in nearly six minutes when Randolph was called for goaltending with 4:39 left in the period, cutting Boston’s lead to 72-60.

“We had that stretch in the third quarter where we struggled offensively and they were clicking offensively,” Wizards coach Randy Wittman said, “and that was the difference.”

Game notes

Washington forward Trevor Booker left the game with a bruised tailbone with 5:42 left in the first half and didn’t return. … Chris Wilcox had 13 points for Boston, one below his season high. … The Celtics swept the three-game season series. … Jordan Crawford had six points in 16 minutes in his first game against the Wizards since being traded on Feb. 21. He had been upset with his diminished playing time in Washington.

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Bargnani sprained his right elbow in the first quarter of Toronto’s 118-116 road loss to the Los Angeles Lakers last Friday night and did not return.

The Raptors said the injury is not related to the ligament problem in his elbow that sidelined him for more than 25 games earlier this season.

The top pick in the 2006 draft, Bargnani is averaging 12.7 points and 3.7 rebounds in 35 games this season, a major drop off from his production over the past few years.

Bargnani, 27, had appeared in 14 of 15 games, including four straight starts, before suffering the injury on Friday.

Bargnani’s name has even come up in trade rumors since the Raptors are struggling this season, but he has two years and about $22 million left on his contract.

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Marion has missed the previous three games because of a bruised left calf suffered during the Mavs’ March 6 win over the Houston Rockets. The Mavs had considered Marion to be day to day, but the calf has not been recovering as well as anticipated.

“It isn’t getting any better,” said Marion, who is not expected to be available for Friday night’s home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. “It’s still the same. It’s still painful right now.”

Marion, a 14-year veteran and one of two 2011 title contributors who remain on the Mavs’ roster, averages 11.7 points and a team-high 7.9 rebounds per game. The Mavs have managed to go 7-3 in games Marion has missed this season, although only two of those victories have come against teams with winning records.

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“I thought he felt much better today,” Quenneville said. “He said he felt good after practice as well. We’ll see how he is [Friday] and with a chance of playing [Friday] night.”

Hansen’s forearm connected with the back of Hossa’s head while the two players were advancing for a loose puck in the air with 18:55 remaining in the third period of Tuesday’s game. Hossa lay face-first on the ice for a few minutes while being attended to by the Blackhawks medical staff. He eventually left the ice under his own power.

“Obviously he surprised with a hit from behind,” Hossa said Thursday. “He hit me pretty hard in the back of the head. Right after, I was shaky. That’s basically why I didn’t return, because I was shaky. We had the day off, and it kind of slowed down. This morning I woke up and felt much better.”

Hossa said he doesn’t believe he suffered a concussion on the hit.

“No, I don’t believe [I had a concussion] because more than anything he surprised me with a punch from behind,” Hossa said. “I was shaky for a few minutes right after that, which is why I didn’t return to the game.”

Hansen met with the NHL on Wednesday and was given a one-game suspension for the hit.

“It’s up to the league,” Hossa said of the suspension. “They’re making the decisions. But I’m glad at least one game.

Hopefully, more guys learn from it. He said he was reaching for the puck. I didn’t buy it, because when you’re reaching for the puck you don’t hit somebody that hard to the head.”

The Blackhawks did not practice Wednesday, but Hossa was evaluated by the team.

“It was a very encouraging that he felt good [Wednesday], and he responded feeling good during practice and afterwards, which is a big test for us and him,” Quenneville said. “That’s definitely very good news.”

Hossa suffered a head injury last season when Phoenix Coyotes forward Raffi Torres launched himself into Hossa during Game 3 of a first-round playoff series. Hossa had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher. He missed the Blackhawks’ final three games of the season and was cleared to play again in early December.

“We were all concerned,” Quenneville said of Hossa’s latest collision. “We all saw the situation in the playoffs and you see it again. These things do have a history, so it was definitely a concern.”

Blackhawks goaltender Corey Crawford and defenseman Brent Seabrook returned to practice Thursday, but goaltender Ray Emery did not participate because of a family commitment. Seabrook will play Friday, and Emery will make his fourth straight start in place of Crawford.

Crawford has missed the Blackhawks’ past three games with an upper-body injury. He is 7-0-3 with a 1.65 goals-against average and a .935 save percentage this season.

Seabrook missed Tuesday’s game against the Canucks because of a lower-body injury. He briefly left Sunday’s game with the Los Angeles Kings after being hit in the groin area by a slap shot.

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The Knicks were in Minnesota to play the Timberwolves on Friday night. They initially planned to fly home after the game, but coach Mike Woodson said that flight was postponed. The team opted to stay in Minnesota overnight and to fly to New York on Saturday.

The Knicks are scheduled to play the Los Angeles Clippers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Woodson said on Friday the team planned to get up on Saturday morning and go over scouting for the Clippers at the hotel before trying to leave for New York.

The Clippers stayed in Miami overnight after their game Friday night against the Heat. They are expected to fly into New York on Saturday afternoon.

Forecasters are estimating 1-to-3 feet of snow will hit the Northeast this weekend.

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Howard was scratched from Friday night’s game at Minnesota with a sore right shoulder and returned to Los Angeles to receive platelet-rich plasma treatments.

“It’s extremely sore all over,” Howard told reporters before the game. “[Saturday] after the procedure it was real stiff, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

The All-Star center flew from L.A. to Detroit to rejoin the team Saturday evening but informed the Lakers he would not be able to play as the team boarded the bus Sunday morning on their way to the arena.

“As soon as the pain goes away he’ll play,” Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Hopefully that’s the next game, but there are no guarantees. It’s just day to day. They’ll check it every day and see when he can go.”

The Lakers play the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday — the team that Howard ranked as his preferred destination when the Orlando Magic were entertaining trade offers in the offseason — but Howard hinted that he could miss that game as well.

“We’ll see how it feels, but right now I’m just going to take it day by day,” Howard said. “We have a couple of days in New York to get some good rest and try to get it strong as possible. But the main thing is for the rest of the season. I don’t want to have this happen every week or two to where I’m fine and then I take a hard hit and I reaggravate it.”

Just as he did following the Lakers’ 92-86 loss to the Suns on Wednesday, Howard would not entertain any questions about surgery possibly being required on his shoulder.

“I don’t even want to think about surgery,” Howard said.

“He’s going to always have to deal with it because it’s not going to go away,” said D’Antoni. “It’s a little bit of a tear that won’t go away. If it gets totally bad then you have to do something [like surgery], but the way it is right now, you just have to deal with it.”

Howard said he hoped the PRP treatments would start to kick in within the next week, and he will rely on prayer in the meantime.

It’s the same injury that kept him out of three games in January; the Lakers went 0-3 in his absence.

Howard aggravated it against Phoenix, when Suns guard Shannon Brown swiped down on Howard’s arms as the big man attempted to bring the ball up from his waist to the basket, in similar fashion to how he originally hurt his shoulder on a hit on his arms from Los Angeles Clippers forward Caron Butler.

“He has to learn to get the ball under his chin and not take it down,” D’Antoni said. “He has a habit of taking it down [by his waist]. That’s when they’re loading up on him and they don’t care about him shooting foul shots, so they just unload on him. That’s a problem, but hopefully he can get that out of his game and not bring it down as much.”

Following the Phoenix game, Kobe Bryant said he suffered a similar shoulder injury in the past and that Howard would have to learn how to play through it. Howard took exception to the comparison.

“Me and Kobe play two different positions,” Howard said. “The position I play, I use a lot of force coming up — whether that’s going up for a dunk or a shot, hook shots … all that stuff you have to make sure your shoulder is stable for it, so it’s a little bit different than, I would say, a guard position. You got guys who are 260-270 [pounds] that you are holding off and you got to really be strong in your shoulder and all that stuff.”

Howard said he will continue to work on his conditioning while he rehabs the shoulder injury and joked that it will give him an opportunity to work on his left hand.

“There are certain treatments that I can do, certain things that I’ll try to work on to get it stronger,” Howard said. “We have the best training staff here in the NBA, so I’m going to continue to work with them on a daily basis to get stronger.”

Pau Gasol started his second consecutive game in Howard’s place as Howard watched the game from the bench in his warm-ups.

The Pistons, meanwhile, are still without guard Jose Calderon, whom they acquired from Toronto in a trade Wednesday. Calderon, from Spain, has been unavailable to play because of unresolved visa issues.

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Carlos Boozer had 19 points and 20 rebounds, and Joakim Noah added 14 points and 13 boards as the Bulls won their 14th straight road game on a Friday. They haven’t lost since April 2011.

Rajon Rondo scored a season-high 30 points for Boston before fouling out with 1:16 to play in overtime.

Kevin Garnett had 16 points and Paul Pierce passed former Celtics star Robert Parish for 22nd on the NBA’s career scoring list by chipping in 13 points. Pierce has 23,342 points and Parish 23,334.

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Kelly interviewed for five hours with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and CEO Joe Banner before they took a break and had a two-hour dinner. The sides agreed to talk again Saturday night after Kelly’s interviews with the Bills later Friday night and the Eagles on Saturday. The Bills announced late Friday that they had interviewed Kelly.

While sources say Kelly has positioned himself as the favorite to become the next Browns coach, there is no contractual agreement in place. However, the two sides see no significant obstacles that would prevent a contract being completed if they decide to move forward Saturday night, the sources added.

Kelly informed Haslam and Banner that he wanted to “go through the process” by meeting with the Bills and Eagles, something he regretted last hiring season when he only interviewed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, according to a source close to the Oregon coach.

Haslam and Banner did not object to Kelly’s wishes to meet with those teams.

Kelly said after Thursday night’s Tostitos Fiesta Bowl win over Kansas State that he hoped to have the process “wrapped up quickly.”

The 49-year-old Kelly turned down an offer from Tampa Bay last year to return for his fourth season at Oregon, where he is 46-7. He has boosted the school’s national profile with a high-powered offense capable of turning any game into a track meet.

“It’s more a fact-finding mission, finding out if it fits or doesn’t fit,” Kelly said after Thursday’s win of interviewing for an NFL job. “I’ve been in one interview in my life for the National Football League, and that was a year ago. I don’t really have any preconceived notions about it. I think that’s what this deal is all about for me. It’s not going to affect us in terms of we’re not on the road (recruiting). I’ll get an opportunity if people do call, see where they are.

“I want to get it wrapped up quickly and figure out where I’m going to be.”

Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said Kelly’s buyout was upwards of $3 million and that there are five years left on Kelly’s contract, which rolled over with an extra year after Thursday night’s win.

If Kelly leaves, Oregon offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich will be promoted to head coach, sources have confirmed to ESPN. That decision was earlier reported by USA Today Sports.

The Browns fired Pat Shurmur earlier this week after going 9-23 in two seasons under him.

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“Cause we’re old as s—,” said the 34-year-old Bryant when asked why a lack of energy has been a problem for the Lakers all season. “What do you want? We just got to figure out how to play when we don’t have that energy. We got to change things up a little bit defensively. We got to figure out what we want to do offensively, figure out what we want to do on nights when we don’t have those legs or have that energy.”

The 76ers beat the Lakers primarily with the contributions of 22-year-old Jrue Holiday (26 points, 10 assists) and 24-year-old Evan Turner (22 points, 13 rebounds).

“You just saw an old damn team,” Bryant continued. “I don’t know how else to put it to you. We’re just slow. You saw a team over there that was just younger and just had fresher legs and just played with more energy, and we were just stuck in the mud. I think individually we all have to figure out how to get ourselves ready each and every game to have a high level of energy. That’s all that is.”

While saddled by such circumstances, Bryant’s belief that the Lakers can make the playoffs and compete for a championship remains unshaken.

“I don’t think there’s a doubt about that,” he told ESPN Radio host Colin Cowherd on Wednesday when asked if the team is built for the playoffs. “The problem is we’ve dug ourselves such a deep hole we got to do a lot of fighting just to catch up and get in that conversation. We firmly believe it’s going to happen but we have to do a lot of fighting just to get there.”

The Lakers are 9½ games behind the 25-7 Clippers in the Pacific Division and are 10th in the Western Conference, 1½ games behind the Portland Trail Blazers for the eighth and final playoff spot. The Lakers can cut into that deficit Friday night when they play the Clippers at Staples Center.

“It’s very deep, we’re very concerned but we’ve been playing well lately,” Bryant told Cowherd in explaining his level of concern for the Lakers. “The last eight games we’ve been playing pretty well but the hole we dug ourselves at the start is very deep, so every loss now cuts a little deeper than it should. So we have to keep focused on how we’ve been playing lately and just continuing to get better from that.”

Following Tuesday’s loss, Bryant, who has managed to lead the league in scoring in this, his 17th season, said every player has to learn to create energy individually.

“It’s figuring it out,” Bryant said. “That’s a big thing when you’re starting to age, is figuring out how to get yourself ready game in and game out. It’s tough. It takes a lot, a lot of commitment.”

Added Bryant: “We didn’t seem to have any energy. You watch the game, we were kind of sluggish, kind of stuck in the mud. When we have games like that, everything is an uphill battle for us. When we play fresh, when we play energized, we’re a completely, completely different team. You saw a lot of those shots tonight falling short, for whatever reason. We got to get the proper rest and get ready for Friday.”

Pau Gasol, 32, agreed with Bryant’s assessment.

“We’re not the most athletic team in the league; we know that,” Gasol said. “But we are experienced and we should create some energy for ourselves out there, and I think it starts by us talking to each other, by communicating, by letting our team really know that we’re there [on defense], and that will create some energy that we need on that end of the floor.”

Bryant sang a similar tune after the Lakers’ previous loss, to the Denver Nuggets on Dec. 26, pinning the 12-point road blowout on how his team looked slow on the court.

“It seemed like we were a little stuck in the mud,” Bryant said in Denver. “We played old, and they played with a lot of energy, a lot of youth, got up and down, and it just seemed like we were in a lower gear all night.”

Not helping things was Dwight Howard, the lone young star in the Lakers’ lineup. Howard, who turned 27 last month, finished Tuesday with just seven points on 1-for-7 shooting to go with 14 rebounds and five blocks as he appeared to labor up and down the court.

“It’s really been frustrating for him because dealing with the injury and trying to come back and expectations that we all have for him,” Bryant said of Howard. “It’s tough to deal with that when you’re not physically the same player that you were a few years ago. It’s been frustrating for him, but to his credit, he’s been battling through it and he’s been finding ways to be effective. I mean, he had five blocks tonight.”

Howard rebutted several inquiries about the state of his back injury, for which he underwent surgery in April, saying he has not suffered any setbacks in his rehabilitation and that his mobility has not been limited by it.

“I thought he got a little tired, probably,” Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said of Howard’s game Tuesday. “Maybe frustrated; you would have to ask him.”

D’Antoni shrugged off the game as an aberration for the former three-time defensive player of the year.

“That may be one game,” D’Antoni said. “We’ll see if it continues. I don’t think it will, hopefully. We had two days, three days off. So this should not have been a game where we were tired at all. Everybody should have had their legs.”

Howard sat on a chair staring silently into his locker for several minutes after speaking to the media, before leaving the arena for the night.

Metta World Peace, 33, refused to accept the age of the Lakers’ roster as an excuse for their play, pointing out what the New York Knicks have accomplished so far this season.

“That’s no excuse, the Knicks are playing great, so that’s no excuse,” World Peace said. “You can’t use it as an excuse for us. Thank you. Thanks for trying.”

Having an older roster hasn’t stopped the Knicks from starting the season with a 21-10 record, good enough for the second-best mark in the Eastern Conference. The Knicks started the season with an average player age of 32 years and 240 days, the oldest in NBA history, according to STATS, LLC.

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