Celtics Title Town

I have been on Doc more this season than any other. I'm starting to feel for Doc, because he hasn't found the cure if their is one. Credit Paul for this call out. He wrote yesterday that Rondo, and Rivers should have gotten together over the summer, or even during camp. They should have reworked the offensive sets. Doc shed some light into how hew feels yet again.

“Last night we liked the effort and we lost the game,” Doc Rivers said of the Knicks game. “Tonight we liked a quarter and a half and we lost the game. You’ve seen the flashes, but it comes out the same.

“I told our guys that you just can’t win without humility. In the first quarter and a half it was a clinic on how to play basketball, how to play defense,” he said. “And then we started breaking rules that you shouldn’t break when you’re in grade school. Our transition defense was a joke. We weren’t getting back, we kept standing. And then once the game became an eight-point game, you knew it was going to be a hard game. As I told our coaches going out (for the third quarter), if this game is close, it’s going to be tough for us.

“Give them credit, they made shots, but it was our approach. Like I told them, who do we think we are? We’re under .500. We got a lead and started acting like we’re the 2008 team, and we’re not. We haven’t earned that right.”

The Celtics act like they won the East Finals last season. But right now they're the laughing stock of the NBA along with the Lakers. Frankly the Celtics may fall further than the Lakers if they keep this up.  The defense got the C's the 27 points lead, and the defense allowed a 19-0 run  by the Hawks during the third quarter. Bradley was murdered on the defensive end just like everyone else. Nobody is safe after this loss, nobody. Doc expressed how he feels about this team saving their best basketball when it counts in the playoffs.

"Not this group," Rivers said following Friday's 123-111 double overtime loss at Atlanta. "The groups in the past, yeah, we had to do that. We had to not play Shaq many minutes, or rest Rasheed (Wallace, now with the New York Knicks) and Kevin (Garnett) and Ray (Allen, now with the Miami Heat) and Paul (Pierce). We got nine new guys here. They've never done this."

This team is new yes, and that means they should be hungry. Tonight I saw a hungry Green, and Lee. In that case, Doc should pull a struggling Pierce, and just role with Green, or Lee. Doc did go with Lee a lot tonight, but maybe not enough. The Celtics are running out of time, excesses, and everything else under the sun.