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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS

June 15, 2008

Doc Rivers

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Game Five

Q. Talk about Rondo. Is something wrong with him? And also, Jeff just mentioned Ray had to take off?
DOC RIVERS: Well, Rondo is just not playing well right now. We still believe in him. They're doing a nice job to start games with Kobe guarding him and roaming, and the ball is ending up in his hands. And what we're trying to get him to do is just be aggressive to the basket.
I thought early in the game he had a lay-up, I think, that he could have taken, and he's looking to be a passer. He's got to look to make more plays and be aggressive to the basket.
The Ray thing is a family matter. We should just leave it at that.

Q. Just talk about just the position now going back home.
DOC RIVERS: Well, we wanted to go back home, but we didn't want to play. You know what I mean? But now we have to go play, and we earned that right. That's why the regular season is so important. We fought for it all year. We have Game 6 at home, and that's not a bad place to be.

Q. I know you've got some team issues, just getting that stuff together, but can you talk about Paul and the game he had tonight?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, he was terrific. I thought he was really aggressive to the basket, getting to the foul line 19 times tells you that -- I thought he really went for it, if you want to put it that way.
I thought as a whole, though, especially down the stretch, I didn't think we trusted our offense as much as we should have. I thought we tried to force plays. The floor was wide open. I mean, it really was, when we had the line-up in, and we just didn't make extra passes as a group, and I think our guys will see that on the film and be disappointed when they see that part of it.
But give them credit; I thought they made plays, they made tougher plays down the stretch. We had a couple of balls right at the basket in our hands. They took them out of our hands, they blocked our shots. Listen, we had great shots. We missed some lay-ups, missed some free throws. That's the way it goes.

Q. It seems like for the first time all series they were the more physical team. How much of that has to do with Perkins, and what do you need to have happen with the possibility of him not being in the play?
DOC RIVERS: We have to be more physical. I agree with you. I thought they started out the game more physical. I thought we had our stretches, but overall I thought they were the more physical team, from Gasol on. I thought all of them, they posted when they wanted to post. They caught the ball in the spots that they wanted to catch the ball on. I thought they forced us off of spots offensively. We told them before the game, this was going to be a game of who could invade the other person's space, and I thought they invaded our space.

Q. Do you think you have to do something different maybe without Perkins being in the lineup?
DOC RIVERS: No, PJ and Leon and maybe Baby, but we were small a lot, as well, which helped us get back in the game.
But we just have to have more of a physicality to us.

Q. Second game in a row you came out slow. What was the problem there?
DOC RIVERS: They were more aggressive, and we have to solve the Kobe problem, you know, being a roamer to start games. When we go with more shooters, he can't roam, we tend to score more. But that's on the offensive end.
Defensive end, they scored in the first six seconds, and I don't know the exact number, we keep that as a stat, over and over again. Whenever we were allowed to set up our defense, we were really good. But they were attacking us early in the clock, so we have to do a better job defensively in transition.

Q. And just how much the loss of Kendrick hurt you on defense in that first quarter?
DOC RIVERS: Listen, it probably hurt us, obviously. But how I feel about the backup quarterback, if you know what I'm saying, whenever you lose, the guy that was hurt or the guy that didn't play becomes very valuable. We're not going to use that. We had our opportunities and we didn't take advantage of them.

Q. Phil just got through talking about what he learned from tonight's victory. He learned a little bit about the resiliency of his team. What did you learn about your squad in defeat?
DOC RIVERS: I thought we were resilient, as well. First quarter we could have packed up the tent. Fourth quarter we were down ten, could have packed up the tent. One thing, I didn't have to learn that. I already knew that about our team. We're going to keep fighting. That's who we've been all year.

Q. What kinds of things do you do to deal with the quick turnaround? What do you do?
DOC RIVERS: It's a terrible turnaround, nothing you can do about it. They leave at 10:00, we leave at 11:00. Hell, it's a tough one. It's as tough as you can have. I think going west to east is tougher. Sleep patterns are messed up. It's a tough one. There's no way around it. We haven't decided what we're going to do on game day morning. Most likely, we will not do anything. They're not going to go to sleep until whenever because it's just a tough turnaround. I wish we could do this on Thursday and skip a Tuesday, but that's not the way it's going to be.
But both teams have the same issue, so you know, it could come down to a game of mental toughness, who fights the fatigue mentally better than the other group.

Q. And backup quarterback concept aside, just the idea of running out of bodies, whether it be to injuries or foul trouble, how do you handle that for the next game?
DOC RIVERS: Kevin getting in foul trouble really hurt us. The only thing I told Kevin is I thought he was playing extremely hard, but we have to play smart, too. We talk about it all the time, smart and hard. Two of his fouls were reach-in fouls that we just -- when Perk is out, we just can't afford it. So we have to do a better job of keeping him on the floor because that was a big blow to us.

Q. You've referred to Kobe as being scary, and for three quarters you guys pretty much contained him, and then the last minute he made the big steal. Can you talk about that?
DOC RIVERS: Well, I was scared of him the first -- I thought he was pretty special the first quarter. He had 15 points. He's just a fighter. I mean, that's why he's great. He made a heck of a steal. We like the numbers and the way the floor was spread. He made a really a last-ditch effort because Paul had him beat. Kevin set what we call a flash screen, Paul had him beat, Kevin was rolling, and Kobe -- it's not like he gambled. He had no choice. He just came from behind and got a piece of the ball. So give him the credit; he made a hell of a play.

Q. Can you talk about Paul's performance tonight?
DOC RIVERS: He was terrific, he was absolutely terrific. He was aggressive. He went for it. We told the guys, you can't wait for 48 minutes to expire. You have to play every minute through 48, and I thought Paul did that tonight.

Q. Coming to LA a week ago with a Tuesday advantage, how do you sum up the LA visit?
DOC RIVERS: Not what we wanted. We wanted two more. Obviously the blanket was that we get to go home, but we really believed that we could win one of these games. You know what, we had our chances in all three. We won one of them, and we'll take it, but that's obviously not what we want.

Q. Are you guys disappointed you couldn't close out and win it tonight?
DOC RIVERS: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Guys are down and upset because they thought they could, they thought they should. But we didn't. And again, we played all year to go home, to have home court.

Q. What's your concern about Rondo's injury? Is he okay? His ankle is fine?
DOC RIVERS: He's fine. You know what, guys, he's a second-year basketball player, and I never lose light of that. There's a lot of pressure on him. I'm not going to put more on him. I'm just going to keep coaching him and trusting him, and he got us here. He's gotten us here. But clearly he's not playing as well as he would like to, but we believe in him.

Q. What kind of concerns do you have about your team's defensive effort tonight?
DOC RIVERS: I didn't like it. But I thought both teams gave great effort defensively, and I thought really some of our offense on both teams came off the turnovers. We had 18, they had 21. I think we've just got to do a better job of taking care of the ball.

Q. Getting back to the quick turnaround, you talked before about how tough it's going to be. How tough is it going to be for Paul Pierce since he went the whole way tonight and he's dealing with the knee?
DOC RIVERS: It's funny, you get Kevin in foul trouble, if he gets in foul trouble, either Paul or Ray, you have to spend minutes with. Paul, he's great as far as not getting rest and playing. He's done it a lot for us this year. Listen, a lot of the guys, you look at their numbers, 44 for Bryant, 42 for Gasol, 41, there was a lot of guys that spent a lot of time on the floor in a very physical basketball game. It's what it is, it's the playoffs, it's tough, it's The Finals. I would say both teams will be ready come Tuesday.

End of FastScripts

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