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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS

June 7, 2008

Doc Rivers

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Practice Day

Q. Paul and Perk, can you just update us on what's up with them?
COACH DOC RIVERS: I don't know. I mean, I've talked. Perk is out today for sure. Neither one of them are going to practice today. Paul will be able to go through the walk-through portion of practice. Perk basically can't do anything for practice. We'll just wait until tomorrow.

Q. What might that mean for tomorrow night?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Really, I don't know yet. I anticipate them both playing, but I just don't know yet.

Q. What's your level of concern?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Well, I'm concerned, but you know, I think they'll both play. I don't know how effective either one will be. They may be very effective. Paul is moving much better today, that's clear. And so of the two, he's the guy I'm more optimistic about, just from watching him move around and walk around.
If we played today, could either one of them play? It would be dicey, but I think they could.

Q. You hear the word "adjustments" a lot. At this time of the year is that really a misnomer? Are you who you are, the Lakers are what they are, you really can't adjust?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Well, it's a true statement, you are who you are, both teams are. You're not going to do a lot of changing as far as your identity of who you are. But there are adjustments. I would say more tweaks. I guess you can use that word, than "adjustments." But you do have to make -- clearly they watched us defend them and made some adjustments to that through what they do, you know what I'm saying. Same thing on the other end, what we were doing offensively, they'll make some adjustments to try to take some things away, and we'll do the same thing on both ends. But as far as changing, that's not going to happen.

Q. So in your mind a physical team cannot become a finesse team, a finesse team cannot become a physical team?
COACH DOC RIVERS: No, you can have better focus on putting bodies on people. I don't know if either one of us is either one of those two things, to be honest. I think we're probably both more in the middle.

Q. Now that you have 12 guys who can play but obviously different players have different strengths than weaknesses, if either Perk or Paul or both of them prove not that effective out there, how do things change for you guys with the other guys coming in?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Well, they change obviously. Paul offensively, most of the time, our No. 1 weapon offensively. We facilitate a lot of our offense through Kevin, but Paul is the one guy that can get a shot whenever he wants to get a shot. That would clearly change things a little bit there.
Perk has been phenomenal defensively with his rebounding. But we do talk about playing 12, and someone else will step in and do the job. We pretty much know where we want to go if something like that happens. But we'll wait and see.

Q. With guys like PJ who might step in in a role like that, these are veterans, Posey is a veteran, but how much do you talk to them about taking a larger role maybe?
COACH DOC RIVERS: You don't. You tell them to take their role, just do it in a starting way. You don't really want them to change who they are and how they've played. I think that would be detrimental to the team, honestly. If it did happen, which again, I don't think it will, but if it did, or if the guys weren't effective, you bring in the other guys to do what they do, and that's something else. That's something we've talked about all year with all our guys.

Q. Relative to the first three rounds, how does the 2-3-2 affect any importance of Game 2? And does the format benefit one side more than the other?
COACH DOC RIVERS: I don't know. We've been arguing about that since they changed the format. I think the team that wins the series will say whatever that format was helped them.
Like I said yesterday, from afar, what I've never liked about 2-3-2 is you fight all year to have Game 7 at home and Game 5 at home. Game 5 is taken away from you in this format. We've had three huge Game 5s in the first three rounds. All of them have been at home. So that part of it changed.
But home court is important every game. It doesn't matter if it's Game 1 or Game 2. All your home-court games are vital and key, so it doesn't change the urgency in that way.

Q. Can you give us a brief history of the phrase "Ubuntu" and talk about how important that is going to be now, especially if Paul is not going to be 100 percent the rest of the way?
COACH DOC RIVERS: First of all, I don't know if he won't be 100 percent, and I'm hoping he will be eventually in the series.
The word came about, I was in a board meeting at Marquette. I think we were discussing public safety of all things, and one of the members next to me just brought the word up and asked me if I had ever heard it or knew anything about it, and I told her I did not. She said she had been to South Africa for three years and she talked about it, and it literally caught me immediately, and I thought it was a great word that fit our team, not just for one moment but for the entire year.
And yeah, it has come into play all year. A lot of times when things aren't -- even though you're winning, sometimes they're not always going well, and it's been an important word for our team.

Q. Do you think it's going to lean more on Kevin and Ray to provide more of the offense if Paul --
COACH DOC RIVERS: Well, I mean, I would assume the ball will find them more, but I don't want to, again, change who we are and how we play if, let's say, Paul was not effective or couldn't go. We're going to play our game, we're going to move the ball the same. Different guys will just have to touch the ball. Clear that we want to play through Kevin, more anyway. I didn't think we did it enough in Game 1.

Q. It seems like you have great rivalries today. You have a rivalry obviously with Detroit, hard-fought, but it seemed like the '80s there was a lot more hatred between teams, you might have experienced with Detroit or Atlanta. Why do you think that is?
COACH DOC RIVERS: There's a lot of theories. Coach Jackson talked or touched on it the other day with the young guys coming in the league. I think AAU has changed a lot of it, and I really believe that. I didn't know anybody from any other team when I came in the league. You knew your teammates, that's it. You literally didn't know them. You basically had never talked to them before, so you tended not to like them.
Now everybody knows everybody. I mean, I was amazed when Mike Miller back when I coached the Magic, he was a rookie, he knew every freaking guy in the league. They talked all the time. I have kids now who are in AAU. My son Austin, he talks about guys that he played with from Seattle. They all know each other now. So I think that has changed.
And honestly, guys, back when they grow up, as much as we love it and fantasize about it, there was only four good teams. Hell, when I was a kid I thought the only three teams that were on TV were the Lakers, the Sixers and the Celtics. I didn't know there were other teams in the NBA. Chicago, I knew about them. But that's all you heard.
And then earlier than that it was the Knicks. But that's probably why the rivalries were so strong, because it was the same teams playing each other every year.

Q. Do you think the rules changes where guys can't get knocked down now, does that add into the fact that there might be less hatred because you don't have a Rambis-McHale situation?
COACH DOC RIVERS: I don't know that. I just know the reaction to the knock-downs may be more than the knock-down. Hell, I think we still knock each other down just as much, you just didn't see 20 guys running in acting like they wanted to fight, including the refs. If you look at a guy wrong now, you think public safety is going to run out. So I think that's part of it, but I think it has to be that way, too.
So I don't know, I just think guys know each other a little bit better. Back then there was a lot of rules in our league that would be called barbaric, fighting, if you picked a guy up off the floor, no talking, no fraternization before games. That's all gone.

Q. Who would you turn to if Perk and Paul didn't play?
COACH DOC RIVERS: We'll cross that when we get to it. We'll worry about that when we get to it. I don't know if it's going to happen, so I'm not going to -- we've talked about it obviously, but we'll just wait and see.

Q. On a different note, how crazy was it the first game? And what did you tell your players about family, friends coming in, people wanting tickets? I know Annemarie (Loflin) was probably more than out.
COACH DOC RIVERS: Yeah, Annemarie worked harder than us (laughter). Families are great, obviously, and so are friends. But you've got to still do your job. I'm sure like them, don't let anybody in your box. You have a game; that's your focus. But people should be a part of it, too, your family, your wife, they should be a part of it. Hell, they've been a part of it all year. But you've just got to make sure you understand that whatever ritual you have on game day, nothing can get in between you and that ritual, that preparation. I thought our guys did that pretty well.

End of FastScripts

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