Rivers relieved to escape with win
Having made two trips to the NBA Finals in three years, Doc Rivers isn’t used to seeing his team as escape artists, especially against a team considered to be a lesser opponent. He’ll still take it.
“We won the game,” said Rivers. “That’s all we get out of this. Great win. In the playoffs, the whole key for you is to win games. We did that. It’s not that we didn’t play hard. We need to be smarter. I’m happy my team won the game, but we need to be better than that. It’s my job to get it out of them.
“They had no [Amare] Stoudemire, who’s out. No [Chauncey] Billups, who’s out. Right when I heard Stoudemire was out, I turned to Lawrence Frank and said, ‘Oh, geez. They’ve got us right where they want us right now.'”
Despite the absence of those players and despite New York shooting 35 percent for the game, the Knicks hung in until the end.
“We just didn’t play well,” said Rivers. “We didn’t execute very well…find a way to win that game, get through it. But you have to win games. We have to be much better. We have to be much better in New York to win games, and we will be.”
— The Knicks outrebounded the Celtics 53-37 in Game 2, including a 20-9 edge on the offensive glass. Rivers said the Celtics struggled on the glass because of their strategy to trap Carmelo Anthony.
“That’s why you don’t like to trap,” said Rivers. “Because we had to go trap, we were less one guy on the glass. So we’ve got to figure out a better way. They were flying to the glass. They knew they didn’t have their guys and they were going for it. Mike had his guys play hard. They played free. We were lucky to win.”
— Jermaine O’Neal left the game in the first half with a mild wrist sprain but later returned. He did not play in the fourth quarter but Rivers said it wasn’t due to health anld that O’Neal could have played. Glen Davis got the minutes instead.
“It was a tough call and we won the game,” said Rivers. “I don’t know if I made the right call or not, honestly. They were small, and we like Baby stretching the floor a little bit for us. But it was a difficult call.”
— Rajon Rondo finished with a playoff career-high 30 points on 13 of 23 shooting. Many of his made shots came at the rim.
“We talk about it,” said Rivers. “He did it. That was terrific. It’s good to see he can do that.”
— By the way, on that Celtics inbounds pass to Delonte West with four seconds left — when West then ran the clock down to under a second — Anthony said, “I couldn’t get to him. Doc Rivers drew up a hell of a play.”
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