Doc’s take

By Gary Dzen

January 23, 2008

1 minute to read

The story of tonight’s game was obviously Toronto’s three-point shooting. The Raptors shot 77 percent from beyond the arc.

“We’ve been great at guarding the three-point line; we just didn’t get there[tonight],” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said after the game. “They made a couple where they stretched our defense and did a nice job. But the other half was us. Our belief is run off three’s, contest the two’s. And we just didn’t run them off the three.”

Rivers said Toronto’s shooting was so prolific that his players almost didn’t believe it could continue.

“We just stopped and stared at the guy, and he shot it,” said Rivers. “It was almost like we didn’t believe they would shoot another one. We call them ‘dare shots.’ We had a lot of dare shots tonight that we gave up, and they made them.

“They were on fire. They made some tough shots too, they really did. But to shoot 71%, hell, half the guys in our league couldn’t shoot 15-for-21 in a gym by themselves behind the three. And they did it with other people on the floor.”