Doc Rivers Called Celtics’ Effort in Loss to Bulls ‘a Crime’


Doc Rivers wasn’t exactly thrilled with his Boston Celtics’ loss to the short-handed Chicago Bulls last night. Rivers ripped into his team through the media. From the Boston Herald: “Maybe they thought they were cool, but I’m not,’ Rivers said. ‘I had to use two timeouts in the first half to remind us that we had an NBA game tonight,’ said a clearly upset coach. ‘I thought this was the worst approach to a game all year for us. Chicago was too tough for us tonight. They got into us and frustrated us, and we let go of the rope. We’ve got three weeks to get better. We need to get tougher, because if we keep playing like this, we’re going to end up playing one of these two teams,’ he said of potential first round series against either the Bulls or Heat. ‘That was an unacceptable effort for us tonight. It was a crime. We just thought we were cool tonight. We were the cool Celtics. We were walking the ball around and having trouble getting it inbounds. No one wanted to work. You don’t play basketball like that.’ Though Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce both acknowledged that an emotional Rivers gave everyone a piece of his anger after the game, they didn’t necessarily agree with his assessment. ‘I don’t know if it is that,’ Pierce said of Rivers calling this the worst game of the year. ‘Everybody is frustrated we lost. I don’t know if it was the worst loss, but we are disappointed whenever we lose. It’s a tough one. We had a good lead, they didn’t have their star (Derrick Rose) in the game, but they’ve also been winning a lot of games without him. They earned the win.’ The loss — the Celtics’ second straight in as many nights — carved a half-game off their divisional lead on the Sixers, who were idle. Despite the damage, the Celtics still hold a one game lead over the team that visits the Garden on Sunday.”