Statement made
Doc Rivers denied it before the game, but Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce confirmed afterward what everybody already knew: The Celtics wanted to redeem themselves tonight.
“Tonight was a statement game for us today man,” Garnett said. “We needed this game for confidence….you could tell at shootaround that we were fired up.
“Ray and Paul were repeatedly saying before the huddle ‘we stop the bleeding tonight’ and we never try to carry over, especially bad things…When we lose, we want it to be very, very, very, very few, and we want to learn from what we made mistakes in the loss and apply it over to the next game. I thought we did a good job of that today.”
Pierce said the Celtics were especially hungry tonight.
“The loss against Detroit left a bad taste in our mouth,” he said. “It didn’t matter who our opponent was going to be this Friday, we were going to come out and really take it to them, really be aggressive, and really play the way we did today. I expected us to come out like we did.”
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