Boston Celtics

Rivers ends tank talk

By Gary Dzen

1 minute to read

Doc Rivers liked his team’s defense tonight.

“Defensively our guys were absolutely fantastic,” said Rivers. “And I loved the ball movement as well … I thought the two days of practice that we had, you could see it. It was a good win.”

  • Rivers tried to put an end to any talk of last week’s “tank game” tonight. He was asked why he opted to put his starters back in the game in the fourth quarter tonight instead of letting the younger players earn their lumps.

    “They [the Celtics bench] just played the game we want them to play,” said Rivers. “And that was the lesson. Going back to [the Charlotte game], they came in with a ‘showtime’ attitude that night. That might be the example of how you spend money to make money. Tonight they didn’t have that at all. They came in all business. That’s why you do those things you do, on games like that, to get that lesson across for games like this. So, lesson learned.”

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