Celtics Title Town

"It's amazing, we turned it over and won," Rivers told reporters in Philadelphia. "That's what (the 76ers) do -- they do a great job of forcing turnovers. But overall, I just loved our effort. I thought the zone was huge for us tonight. The new guys, I thought, all came in and gave us a lift, so it was just a good team win."

When you break down this game it was truly the turnovers that allowed the 76ers to stay in the game. The Celtics gave the ball away 22 times.

Jordan Crawford provided a needed second-half scoring spark, finishing with 12 points. After starting 1-for-4  in the first half, Crawford had 10 second-half points on 3-of-3 shooting from the field,including 2-for-2 from 3-point land.

"(Crawford is) comfortable," Rivers said. "We got on him at halftime. It's funny, Kevin (Garnett), all the guys, they were on him at halftime because he missed a couple shots and you could see he didn't want to shoot anymore and our guys, they beat me. Before I had to say it, 'This is what you do. You shoot the ball. Shoot the ball. They go in, they go out. Sometimes they don't make it. But you've got to keep shooting it.' And I thought he showed that when he came back out, he was looking for his shot. That's what we need him to do."

I was worried for awhile when I watched Crawford start 1-of-4. He was aggressive but his shot selection was iffy at best. Overall the effort was given, and it should have been expected after three days off. Although the Celtics had 22 turnovers they beat their turnover total with 34 assists.

"That's the new us in a lot of ways, is the ball kind of finds the open guy," Rivers said. "We just come down and, when they made a run they blew up a couple of our plays with their good defense. And the ball just kept moving and eventually it found an open shooter. It's simple, but it's hard to do unless you buy in, and everybody's bought in."

This was a  big  win in the sense that playing a back-to-back usually means loss, or a very tough win the next night. The Celtics have historically been an awful back-to-back basketball team especially on the second night. So that's why the first game is a must win for me.