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NBA FINALS: CELTIC v LAKERS

June 13, 2010

Doc Rivers

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Five

Los Angeles Lakers 86
Boston Celtics 92

Q. You've been saying all series that you were going to have to win a game when Kobe went off. Is it fair to say that this qualifies?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, I hope so. I think it was, what, 19 straight points? I'm not sure. It felt like more. You know, it's amazing what that does to your team. We were up, I think, 12 or 10 when he was making that run, and we had to use a time-out to settle our guys down. What we talked about before the game, you could see they wanted to change the defense, they wanted to start trapping, and I just tried to keep telling them, it's only two points each time he scores. It's not ten. It's just like if someone else was scoring. As long as we were going to keep scoring the way we were scoring, we were going to be good. But it makes you question your defense because he was terrific.
I love that our guys for the most part, they held it in, they understood what he was doing, but we defended everyone else, and I thought it was big.

Q. You've dealt with some MVP top vote-getters in this playoff. Can anyone else do what he does?
DOC RIVERS: No, no, he's the best shot maker in the game. There's probably better athletes and all that, but there's no better shot maker than Kobe Bryant. I mean, you know, in that stretch I kept turning to Tibs and Armond and saying, those are tough shots. He was making tough shots.
You know, you've just got to live with it and play through it.

Q. I wanted you to talk about Paul just in general. And also the inbounds play that Kevin lofted to Paul in a tight spot and then he buzzed it off to Rondo for the lay-up.
DOC RIVERS: Well, Paul has said for years that he could play for the Patriots, and maybe we might have to believe him.
We had a time-out. We had one time-out. I didn't want to use it because we could advance the ball with the time-out. So we were going to count to four, and if Kevin didn't have anybody open, I was going to call it. Before I could get there, I see the ball in the air, and it was a great catch. And then I thought the pass and the catch by Rondo in the finish was huge for us. And I told Rondo I was so happy that he attacked the basket on that. A lot of guys would have dribbled it out. I think if you can get to the basket and get a lay-up, you take the lay-up in that situation, and I think did he that.

Q. Can you talk about Paul in that situation.
DOC RIVERS: Paul was terrific. He attacked all night. He did it through the offense, he did it through isos, he did it in pick-and-rolls, he made big shots for us. He has a great rhythm right now, and we need it.

Q. At one point you had Rondo giving Artest a little shove, you had Ray and Fish --
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, I don't like that stuff. Let's just play. It was physical. There was a lot of pushing going on, but we kept getting the technicals. You know, and I understand you want to take up for your teammates, and that is good, but strength sometimes is walking away, and I tell our guys that all the time. If you want to show toughness, toughness is walking away from all the other stuff.

Q. Does that show a little more the urgency of winning this one now?
DOC RIVERS: Well, this was huge for us. Let's just be honest. For us, we had to win this game, and that's the way we felt going into it. For them they still have two home games, and they understand that. That's how you have to think.

Q. Obviously it made your feature of your benches the high energy level. Does that ever make you nervous it might be too high and lead to bad decisions?
DOC RIVERS: You mean like tonight?

Q. Maybe.
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, I thought the first half, though, they had one little stretch there that was terrific. I thought they stretched the lead for us again. They did it again. In the second half not as good, but that's okay, you can't expect them to be great every night. I understand that. But I did think there were little efforts by each guy here and there. Rasheed had a couple of great plays. I thought the three he made for us was huge for us. Nate gets to the basket and makes a lay-up. Obviously it wasn't the same impact as the other night, but they still had an impact for us.

Q. Is it a mistake to try to calm down someone like Nate? Do you want him to play at that high energy level?
DOC RIVERS: Listen, I've tried with all of them. Clearly none of that has worked. We have two guys one tech away. I don't know if calming down and us goes together. I would love that but it hasn't worked out very well.

Q. Although you're relatively new to this rivalry, you've obviously been around the game a long time. Do you get the sense it would be a special moment for this team to be able to follow in the old Celtics' teams as the group that continuously keeps the Lakers away from a championship?
DOC RIVERS: Well, I'm going to focus on Game 6. I think it would be special in any situation, but I'm not even going to go there right now. I told our guys that, as well. You've got to play 48 minutes. You've got to play the game, and that's where we need to stay.

Q. Kevin said yesterday, he said, "We haven't had all of our big guys click, click, clicking," the way he put it, "all at once." You got all of that today. Why do you think they were able to do that?
DOC RIVERS: Well, because we got stops on defense, and I think at one time we were almost shooting 70 percent. I kept telling them it was our defense, it's the defense, it's the stops, it's the transition. You're getting Rondo out on the fast break, you're getting Kevin early posts, you're getting Ray out on the fast breaks and that's why we were scoring.
And then it was the unselfishness. At the start of the third quarter Ray had a shot and passed it back to Paul for a shot. That's letting the ball find the open guy. That's who we are when we're good, and when we're not, we're not very good. It's the way we should play.

Q. You guys trailed twice in this series and several other times in the postseason where it didn't look as bright as it might have been. What is it about the mental toughness of these players that's let them get to this point?
DOC RIVERS: Well, I think we have a lot of veterans, number one, and we just think one game. We don't look -- we got off of that early on, looking at the whole picture and all that stuff. That makes it fuzzy for us. I think our team has a very good ability to just focus on the next game. Through the playoffs that's been very good for us, and that's the way we have to stay.

Q. I want to ask you about Game 6: If you can think back to the Knicks team that you were on, even though you weren't playing, you went into Houston with a 3-2 lead --
DOC RIVERS: I thought about that the other day when John Starks called me and reminded me of that.

Q. Just how hard is it to do that? Do you really figure you've got to get Game 6 and that's how you have to look at it?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, you do. Bottom line is when they won Game 3, from that point on we felt every next game is a must game. We've had the same, each game is Game 7. We said it in Game 4, we said it again today and we'll say it again. That's how we have to approach the game. We lost our wiggle room by losing that home game. The Lakers played well enough to have home-court advantage all year, and so it's to their advantage.

Q. Do you remember Riley stressing that back in '94, as well, with you guys, you've got to win that Game 6?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, and we had opportunities, obviously, in Games 6 and 7. You know, that's a bitter memory obviously for me. I was injured sitting on the bench. You know, so it just felt like you couldn't help individually. You know, as a team we had a lot of great opportunities in that series, in Game 6 and 7 if you remember. But it just didn't happen. For me obviously a learning experience, but I can't use that experience for the players on this team. Hell, half of them are too young to remember, and half of them probably don't care.

Q. Along the same lines you had said going into the playoffs that you were going to have to win on the road at some point. You didn't know it was going to be literally, but talk about having to close out at somebody else's home.
DOC RIVERS: Well, the Lakers have played the best between us to get home-court advantage, but we've played the best all year on the road. So our team will be ready, and it's going to be a hell of a challenge for us because they're going to be great, and we're going to have to beat them at their best because they're going to be great there, and we can't expect anything else.

Q. Do you have anything hidden in the locker room this time?
DOC RIVERS: No, no. I was hoping we wouldn't have to see it.

Q. Going back to that third quarter, you guys were scrambling defensively you said, but how were you able to keep yourselves so focused offensively? You matched every basket Kobe made.
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, that's the point I was trying to stress. It would have been one thing if he had been scoring and we had not been scoring, then it would have been an issue. But we were scoring and we had great rhythm and we had great offensive rhythm and you could see that. That's what made me tell them to just keep playing. I was very concerned when Kobe did that, that we were going to stop playing offense because we were so concerned defensively. Paul switched on Kobe and that's why I got Tony in, because I didn't like that because Paul was our offensive guy. I didn't need him using all his energy to guard Kobe. That's part of what we were going through. The scoring was huge for us.

Q. Some of what they were doing defensively they were sort of doing on their own?
DOC RIVERS: No, no, he was scoring. We wanted to change. We didn't change -- guys on the floor, they wanted to change it. If I thought he was beating us with our defense, with bad defense, but he was beating us with good defense and that's what good players do, and you've got to breathe through it.

Q. How is Rasheed tonight physically? And what was the deal with Paul the last play of the first half?
DOC RIVERS: Well, he thought he was getting the ball, didn't get it, so he was walking away. Then Rondo was going to give him the ball and held it, so it was just miscommunication. We want the ball in Paul's hands at the end of the quarters, if we can do it because we haven't been very good ending quarters as of late. We wanted a pick-and-roll with Paul and a big, and it just never happened.
Rasheed is good. He was really good in the first half, so he's fine.

Q. Paul just walked away when there was still time on the shot clock?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, because when Rondo gets it, it's get away and let Rondo go. That's what he thought Rondo was doing. Rondo thought Paul was going to come back. That's our team. You've been around us to know that's us.

Q. Could you talk about Kevin, his all-around game, he had 18 points, 10 rebounds, but particularly the steals, the defense.
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, he was a great defensive player tonight. The offense was great, as well. But he just had great energy. We extended his minutes a little more tonight than we thought we would have to. He was sensational. That's what we need from him. He's one of those guys that just does a lot of stuff for your team, and a lot of it goes unnoticed, but tonight on the stats sheet it doesn't. The only thing I told our group again, we played three quarters. I thought in the fourth quarter we tried to hold onto the game and we didn't go get the game. We stopped playing the way we had played for three quarters. We can't do that in LA. We have to play for four and play through the game.

Q. Do you think that was his best game or among the best games he's played in The Finals this year all-around?
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, all-around, definitely. Maybe Game 3 offensively, but all-around, this was terrific.

Q. Again on Kevin, he also seemed like the guy who was calming everyone down at certain points --
DOC RIVERS: That tells you how screwed up we are. Kevin Garnett is calming our team down. It's funny now, but it was Kevin and Tony Allen in the huddle telling everyone to calm down. I jokingly told Armond this is a crazy basketball team here.
But he was trying. I thought he actually did it too much. I thought he had two or three shots, you remember, in the fourth where he was open and he was trying to slow everything down, and that's when I told him, "Hey, let's speed your game up."
But that's who we are. We are an emotional team, and we're not going to hide from that.

Q. There was also a moment where things were getting a little crazy and you called a time-out and you went right to him on the post and he was able to get you two points. It still seems like when you need those two --
DOC RIVERS: Yeah, he's able to get them for us. That's where early in the year health-wise he couldn't do it, and as the year has gone on now you can see he's very comfortable down there.

Q. He had a key inbounds play there with about 40 seconds left, Kevin hit Paul and Paul passed to Rajon. How did that play evolve in relation to how you had designed it?
DOC RIVERS: Well, the spacing was exactly the way we had designed it. We wanted either Paul to loop around, pass or Rondo. It went to Paul and then Paul threw it to Rondo, and what we told everybody, stay away from each other because that's how they trap.
Honestly I would have rather had the time-out because I thought Kevin's pass was a hard pass. He saw something that clearly I didn't see. But Paul made a catch, and the other thing we told him to do was keep playing through the catch. Don't stop and hold the ball. Play and attack. If we get a lay-up, we'll take it.

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