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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICSJune 14, 2008Doc RiversLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Practice Day Q. Hello, Doc. DOC RIVERS: Hello, Mark. Q. First question: Talk about your guys physically, Paul, Rondo -- DOC RIVERS: I think everybody's good, you know. We'll hold Perk out of practice today, but he looks good. He's moving his arms and shoulders pretty well, so again, we won't know until tomorrow, but right now I think everything looks good. Q. There was a report today that Paul maybe might have surgery after the season on his knee and could be potentially that bad. I just want to see what you thought about that and where he is. DOC RIVERS: I didn't read the report, so I don't know. I don't know enough about it. I stay out of that part of it. So you know, we've noted that it's not 100 percent, and that's about all I'll say about it. Q. Doc, obviously they're probably going to throw the kitchen sink at you tomorrow with it being an elimination game. How much as a coach do you worry about what different things they might do as a team versus just focusing on your own team? DOC RIVERS: You gotta try to think about it a little bit, obviously, but you just gotta do -- you know, we have to play better as well. We won that game, but we didn't have a great game. We didn't play well in our mind, and we didn't play well in Game 3 as well, so we have some things we have to fix to get better, and the key is us being as desperate as them. Q. Just the sheer number of games you guys have had to play in these playoffs, how have you seen that affect the team physically? DOC RIVERS: I mean maybe that's why we have these little bumps and bruises. I don't know, Rachel, but we have, I don't think our guys look at it in the volume. I think you guys, you can sit down and look at the numbers and the amount of games, and I don't think our guys look at it that way. They look at one game -- I know it's a cliche, but they look at each individual game, so they've been a pretty mentally tough team and we've been able to handle it. Q. And in terms of focus, you've talked about there's a couple of games they had big leads where you said they haven't been able to keep the focus. DOC RIVERS: Yeah. We have to have it. I mean this is not a team -- this is a dangerous basketball team we're playing, and like I said yesterday, you know, minus probably one game each, either team could have won any of these games, you know, and so it's that close. You know, we understand that, so we have a 3-1 lead, and we feel just as desperate as they do because this series is as close as you can possibly make a series and we understand that. Q. What have you noticed about your team that they in the past haven't been able to necessarily close or how do you fix that? DOC RIVERS: I don't know how you fix it, but I'm still working on it. I can tell you that. But we just have to have great mental toughness and focus, and we can't -- again, when we've only focused on the process of playing basketball, we've been very good. Whenever we start looking at scores and results, we've been very bad, and it's as simple as that. Now, how you fix that, I clearly haven't figured it out yet, so it's something that we have to do better at. Q. Doc, in your eyes is there a difference between Paul Pierce this season and previous season? DOC RIVERS: Yeah. He has better players around him, and it makes him better; and it allows him to do more things. It allows him to be a better rebounder when he needs to be, allows him to be a better defender, but we all know that if you put better players around anybody, obviously each guy will improve because of the other guy, and that's what's happened to Paul. Q. Has he matured as well or is that overstating it? DOC RIVERS: Well, I think he's matured, but I don't know if he wasn't mature before. He was the guy that just had to do everything, which I -- you know, that's tough. I was in Orlando with Tracy, and that's very difficult when you basically have to do it all, all the interviews, all the playing, all the defense. I mean you have to do it all. That's very -- that's a tough job. Q. Doc, Ray kind of made his reputation as an outside shooter. He had a couple big drives. How does that fit into his game and help you guys? DOC RIVERS: Well, obviously he's allowed to drive because he has a great jump shot. You know, all he has to do is what we call "Eye look at the basket," and right when he does that, it forces the defense to come up, and then he can take you off the dribble. That was part of what he did to get to the basket on that last play. You know, he just lifted his head, looked at the rim. Defensively, you have to react to that because he's such a great shooter, where when you're not, you can look at the rim all day and it's not going to make you come up and defend the guy any closer. So obviously we want to attack the basket and that's been our thought throughout this series, and I think we've gotten away from that in stretches, and I thought in the comeback we did a lot of that. Q. Does he have a different kind of leadership than Kevin or Paul? How does that show itself? DOC RIVERS: I think each guy leads in their own separate way. They're all different. You know, it's a team full of guys that kind of lead on our team. I don't know if there's -- Kevin with his intensity and with his focus, you know, they're just all different in a lot of ways. Ray's the talker of the group. He likes grabbing guys to the side and, you know, mentor -- you can call him the mentor of the group with a lot of the young guys. He enjoys that role. He does it. The young guys actually listen sometimes, you know, and so he's been very good in that. Q. Doc, two questions for you: Talk about the fourth game being the toughest to win, and to date has Ray's performance been MVP-like? DOC RIVERS: I'm not going to get into the whole MVP thing. I think to date our team, all the guys, so -- but I mean so far that was the toughest game clearly. But each game has been very -- it's amazing how looking at the film -- and that's what we do as coaches. You look at each game over and over again, how each game has been so different from the other, and then you know, there's stretches that they return back to where we both thought the series or the games would be. It's not been a great game of flow, a great series of flow. And that's kind of been surprising. Q. Two questions: One, you said Perkins and Rondo are good to go. Will they be in the starting lineup? DOC RIVERS: Yeah. Q. They'll both start? DOC RIVERS: Yeah. Q. Okay. Secondly, you were more effective in the second half when you put Pierce on Kobe. Can we expect that again tomorrow? DOC RIVERS: Well, I think he's guarded Kobe in the other games as well in stretches. The difference was he did it the entire second half. One guy will not guard Kobe Bryant. It's just -- it's too hard. It's too much work, and it takes all the energy out of that one guy. We basically have used three guys. We're capable of using four with Tony Allen, and it'll probably stay the same. Q. Doc, can you just talk about the hunger of your team, especially your three stars, guys who have never had this opportunity, being one win away from the title, what they must be feeling right now? Seems like they've really been playing with a lot of hunger throughout this series. DOC RIVERS: Yeah, they have. They've played with a lot of passion, but so have the Lakers, or the series wouldn't be as close as it's been per game. And you know, I don't know, and I don't ever believe that there's one group of guys more hungry than the other group of guys. You know, Lamar Odom, I mean they're hungry, too. Obviously Kevin and Ray and Paul are the three guys we talk about the most. And you know, PJ Brown should be in that group, too, as far as I'm concerned. You know, they've all played a long time for an opportunity, but at the end of the day you gotta go make it and you gotta go finish it. Otherwise, you just had an opportunity. Q. Thank you. DOC RIVERS: Thanks, guys. End of FastScripts |
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