Kristaps Porzingis participated in a scrimmage at the end of Wednesday’s practice as he continues to recover from his calf injury and the Celtics center said he believes he’s ready to return for their next game on Friday against the Knicks.

Porzingis looked good in the full-court scrimmage – which included teammates like Dalano Banton, Lamar Stevens, Svi Mykhailiuk and Neemias Queta, in addition to several Celtics coaches – as he wore a black sleeve on his left leg. The big man has missed four games due to a left calf strain but the expectation is that he’ll be back on Friday when the Celtics return to TD Garden.

“I believe so. I believe so,” Porzingis said. “I haven’t talked to the medical staff yet but I think, after what I did today, should be good to go.”

Added Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla: “We’ll see how he responds (Thursday) but he’s progressed really well and we expect him to be ready. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, so I don’t know what he said, but he looked good out there today.”

Friday will mark two weeks since Porzingis suffered his calf injury on Nov. 24, when he left during the third quarter of the Celtics’ loss to the Magic. While Porzingis said the injury was not serious, the Celtics seemed to take a cautious approach with him. He was not tempted to return for Monday’s In-Season Tournament game against the Pacers even though he traveled with the team.

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“If I could have gone I would have went,” Porzingis said. “So yeah, it is what it is. And it’s also like, I listen to professionals at this. If you asked me, I would have maybe kept playing in the Orlando game. But they know what they’re doing and I’m just trusting them.”

If he does return Friday, Porzingis is unsure if he’ll be on a minutes restriction.

“I’m not a big fan of the minutes restriction,” Porzingis said. “I always, when I’m back, I want to be back and play full minutes. But we’ll see. Of course, they have a plan and we’ll see what kind of feedback I get after today and go from there.”

Either way, Porzingis’ return will certainly be much-welcomed. The Celtics have played mostly well in Porzingis’ absence, but have been exposed in some moments. Their third quarter problems have continued. They were abysmal in crunch time of Monday’s loss to the Pacers, an area that has seen some improvement this season with the addition of Porzingis.

But 20 games into the season, it’s even more important for the Celtics’ starting five to develop more chemistry for the long-term. Because of injuries to both Jrue Holiday and Porzingis, the starting five has only played 58 minutes together over the Celtics’ last 10 games, compared to 133 minutes over the first 10 games.

“I believe we have a lot of room to grow, because of the talent that we have,” Porzingis said. “We’re already playing good basketball, but we believe, still, we can we can achieve many levels. …

“I think more of just building chemistry as a team. Again, I’m added to this team, it’s something different, guys are getting used to playing with me, but you already see some glimpses of me and (Jaylen Brown), (Jayson Tatum), and all of us just getting a feel for each other. Jrue is here too, so it’s something new and we’re working to build that chemistry throughout the year.”

Identity search

Before this season began, Mazzulla made an emphasis that he wanted the Celtics to force more turnovers. The Celtics ranked 27th in the turnovers forced per game last season, and Mazzulla viewed that as an area of improvement in an effort to create more possessions.

But it’s not going well so far. Through 20 games, the Celtics have actually been worse in that area this season, ranking 28th in the league with just 12.2 turnovers per game. It hasn’t seemed to affect their defensive ability – the Celtics are second in the league in defensive rating – and Mazzulla is still calculating what his team’s defensive identity should look like.

“It’s a tough one,” Mazzulla said of the Celtics’ low turnovers forced rate. “It’s something that you really, really have to commit to consistently. It’s a matter of like, what’s the DNA of our defensive identity versus what can we realistically be really good at over a long period of time, and so it’s still something that we’re working to do is some of our defensive adjustments.

“Obviously you can always get better at the little things. Your ball pressure, your active hands, trying to get deflections, but we’ve cleaned up a lot of other areas that we haven’t been great at over the years like our offensive rebounding, our crashing and stuff, and so really deciding is it the true DNA of our team or is it more about can we get better at having some different adjustments that we can go to and be good at those?”

Mazzulla said that forcing turnovers is not something that can be controlled, and suggested it just might not be a strength of his team and they should focus on creating success in other ways.

“You almost have to sell out to that (forcing turnovers), so to speak, or have certain types of guys where for us we can get better at our decision making, our offensive execution which keeps our turnovers down,” Mazzulla said. “We’ve really grown in our crashing and our offensive rebounding, so we’ve found a couple other areas to help control the shot margin and so I think it’s focused around what makes sense and what puts our team in the best position to be successful.” …

Holiday came up limping at the end of Monday’s loss to the Pacers and was grabbing at his knee, but seems to be OK. Mazzulla said the guard went through Wednesday’s practice.