One week left
The playoffs can sometimes seem interminable, but the Celtics and Lakers have a maximum of one week of basketball left this postseason, regardless of how the rest of the series goes.
Celtics center Kendrick Perkins was asked about his team’s approach for the home stretch.
“There’s only two teams playing basketball right now, the Lakers and the Celtics,” said Perkins. “Like Paul [Pierce] said after we lost Game 3, we’ve got to come out and dedicate ourselves, and after that we can enjoy the summer.”
Celtics coach Doc Rivers said he would not drastically alter his approach to his players’ minutes just because he can see the end in sight.
“In [Game 4] you can do it more because there’s days off,” said Rivers. “But after this game you really can’t afford to do that anymore, even though there will only be three games left or two or whatever. You have to be careful if you use all your guys and then there’s a day off and you play, then you don’t have anything left for the next game. At least with our team. We have to be very careful with how we manage minutes.”
— Besides leading his team in scoring in the fourth quarter of Game 3, it was well reported that Derek Fisher was his team’s emotional leader at the end of that game.
Perkins was asked if the Celtics have had a similar emotional leader during this series.
“I think Rasheed’s been that guy off the bench,” said Perkins. “We haven’t really had that game where everybody’s gotten involved. We still haven’t had a great game from all of our guys. We’ve got to do it together.”
Speaking of Wallace, Rivers said his back is as healthy as it’s been all series. Wallace is good to go.
“Rasheed is going to be fine,” said Rivers. “He’s feeling a lot better today. We can’t worry about it anyway. He’ll be fine.”
Rivers did admit that Wallace’s health has impacted the Celtics’ rotation, but the coach said that Wallace is healthier now than he was earlier in the series.
“Just the minute part of it [has been effected],” said Rivers. “It’s not as much his back anymore, it’s his conditioning. The two weeks or three weeks of literally just playing in games, they catch up to you conditioning wise. But I think over the last four or five days he’s been running every day, ran yesterday, just trying to get his wind back to sustain it more. Rasheed is going to be fine. We anticipate playing him a little bit more tonight for sure.”
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