This reality is no laughing matter. Tony Alen, isnt that the guy we dont want to keep in this team next year?

lots of stuff. 1. where was tony? doc is a doofus and is flirting with disaster.2. where was perk for most of the 4th? in at around 4 mins to go? 3. what was paul thinking? missing layins, free throws, making stupid fouls, and getting riled by physical play.4.rondo was bringing them back in the 3rd and he’s out when atlanta starts its revival. i remember tommy playing jo jo 64 mins. against phoenix. rondo is young-he can last.5. sam looks out of control the last 2 games. the hawks go to their go-to guy every play-joe j. who is totally under control. when rondo has the ball, i feel we are better. posey had some cool. kg tried but has been missing some easy ones, but he is not to blame. doc is the doofus and his playoff folding act looks tired.

This is no longer Disney World. We are now in the Coaching World. You guys now the rest of the script.

This is last years playoff match of “GOLDEN STATE” vs. “DALLAS”

What happen did someone take the binky out of the Celtics mouth or something! I was waiting for someone to step up after the game and say we played like a bunch of “GIRLS” as Larry Bird once said in the playoffs. Maybe this team needs someone to smack them upside the head.

And did Doc forget to Coach.

Better yet, I think Doc is Coaching the Atlanta Hawks, maybe he thought he was playing for them again!!!

As much as I was in his corner and defended him, I’m sick to my stomach to see the Celtics play like HORSE BLEEP….

NO EXCUSE… NO EXCUSE at all

Good Luck Jeff,

This is what this Blog needed for today ;) I’m sure you will get plenty of hits now with Angry Fans,,,,,,

Yes only 2 games… but we can’t play like this and think we’ll be hanging banner 17 up anytime soon…….

Well, looking back now maybe Danny should have traded Paul Pierce for then the 3rd pick in the draft which would have been Chris Paul

And then we could have kept Al Jefferson…..

Okay I’m reaching here… but I’m still very “ANGRY”

NO EXCUSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV7LOpeeWBc

Master Po… save us from this dreaded disease ………

Takith the Doctor to Never Never Land….. ;D

there’s a reason Doc lost his job in orlando and it was there for all to see last night and in game three as well. he ran his starters into the ground. garnett, allen and Pierce have been conditioned all year to play 30 minutes. Now doc wants them to be iron men. It’s not working. he needs to play his bench AND they need to start contributing or this series is over, Yes play tony allen, eddie, powe and baby. Cassell I play if his shot is falling. If it isn’t put him on the bench. PJ brown is done so forget him. Activate scal and put him on Josh Smtih. At least he plays with energy and passion. The Hwaks have 3 guys who can hurt us- bibby, smith and JOhnson. we can neutralize bibby and horford with rondo, perk and Powe but garnett needs to shut down smith and then we need to double johnson. He is the only one on that team can routinely beat us off the dribble. I would play allen, posey and T. Allen on him and just hound him all game. ROndo needs to get up tight on Bibby. we need 48 minutes of “hell” on defense tomorrow night and DOc needs to sub liberally to keep gusy fresn. the hawks only go 7 or 8 deep. we need to start making them pay for that lack of delpth

Okay.. Doc Rivers new name is

Okay.. Doc Rivers new name isDoctor Vinnie Doombats !!!!! I can hear Johnny Most screaming from high above court side in heaven now !!!

You can’t win by shooting threes the whole freakin’ game. Also, Doc does not know how to rotate players. It was evident last year & now in crunch time, the cruel truth is blaring at us all. God save the C’s!

The Celtics may peck and claw their way past the Hawks—may—but that’s as far as they go.

BTW the photo of leon looking at his shoes must be when he slipped and johnson hit the big three that put them up 5. leon should not have been in the game at that point. it should have been perk or posey or both. Leon on JJ is a complete mismatch. doc set up the whole 4th qtr meltdown by not establishing any of his bench players earlier in the game. add in the mediocre effort by our stars, the disparity in free throws and there you have it. Despite doc’s wish that we play as a team I’m starting to wonder whether you can really win in the playoffs that way. I think we need Pierce or allen or someone to go for 30 points. having each of the big 3 score 15 isn’t working

More important,

Who will be suspended for game 5? Will it be Perkins and Williams or Will Garnett be suspended too???

This is more scary going forward ……

Who was the brain scientist that traded Joe Johnson in the first place?

Mike Bibby was right abotu celtics fans… We are a bunch of fairweather fans. I am reading all thsi crap about how doc mis-coached the team? What??? Does Doc need to re-affirm the importance of the playoffs to 3 superstars? Blame doc all you want, but alas, he can’t be on the floor to make professional players do their friggin’ jobs.

Oh, and did I mention how much I hate the fairweather Celtics fans…

The Celtics are going to win this series, and this may even end up being an experience that helps them further down the road in these playoffs. Two losses on the road to a fired up, athletic team changes nothing. All the Hawks did was hold serve.

That being said, last night’s loss is on Doc. He is a terrible coach that cruised through the season the the back of a ridiculously stacked team. Make an ADJUSTMENT Doc, Joe Johnson played great but he isn’t Lebron (gulp) he can’t be allowed to single handedly win a game like that.

Also, and this is my main issue with Doc, what is with his fourth quarter rotations the last two games? Eddie House doesn’t play all game but then plays more than half of the first quarter? Rondo is YOUNG, get him out there and let him play. The first half of the fourth quarter on Saturday was also mostly the bench, get the starters out there and win these games.

I disagree that Tony Allen would have been the answer. The Cs have never stopped any scorer with just one guy, not even Tony. We’ve always combated these types with swarming team defense. Look at the replays of JJ’s dribble drives. The rotations were late every time. When they started trying to trap him early (which was a coaching change, by the way) the traps were too soft and he split them easily. When we started switching (another coaching adjustment) he would shake the bigger defender loose for a step back jumper (like the play when Leon fell down).

On the other end of the floor, we were completely intimidated out of attacking the rim. I’ve never seen Pierce avoid contact like that before. Also, our spacing was awful, such that we allowed them to clog the lane when Garnett had the ball on the post. Finally, we simply missed open shots, free throws, and lay-ups.

Should Doc have tried TA? Maybe. At that point you try anything. But, to me, the blame goes to our poor execution of team defense, and that includes KG. Putting TA in the game would not have fixed that. But, folks are correct when they say that it was worth a try. I just wouldn’t place the game at the feet of Doc in that fashion when there was so much wrong with the way we played.

Lastly, no one was complaining about the shortened rotation when we blew them out by 20 the first two games. Let’s try to be consistent here.

Were the 2 victories due to Mike Woodson’s genius? Is Mo Cheeks doing circles around Flip in Philly managing to be even with Detroit 2-2? Hardly, so it seems like a bit of an overreaction to scream out that Doc is getting outcoached again. Come on people, it is the NBA playoffs, many 1st round series have gone 6-7 games with the lower seed managing to win a couple of games on their home floor, this is nothing new, except to panicked C’s fans who have cut their teeth on lottery teams and seemingly have ignored the NBA playoffs the last 20 years. Assuming we would roll in 4 was too much hopeful thinking in the first place, already considering this a failure cause it will now go at least 6 shows no historical perspective in regards to the NBA playoffs. And if we manage to get by this series, which I think we will, will have ZERO bearing in whether or not we can beat the Cavs in the next round, that is all about how we match up with them and how well we play against them. Every series takes on a life of its own, drawing conclusions from one series in projecting how the next one will go just isn’t supported by history.

Now if we lose Game 5 on our own floor, I may be willing to join in the chorus, but until then, we are still in control of the series, have homecourt, and are still the likely victor. As much as I dislike Donny Marshall, his point about the 1st playoff series often being the toughest one to get past, especially for a new team, is a valid one.

This still hasn’t sunk in yet ….. >:( …… We got it handed to us and if they think coming back home is better for them….. well they are wrong.. The Lakers finished there business against a better team than Atlanta…..

This team is playing scared…… It’s like in the movie ROCKY IV vs the Russian…. We are the Machine and as soon as Atlanta saw some blood, they came right at us and pounded us…..

Well we better have an answer for them come Wednesday or say goodbye……

This team played weak and scared. There was no heart or fire in the players. It’s as if they wanted to go on vacation now……

You know, I totally logged in today hoping that Jeff would soothe my fears and tell me everything would be okay…

I was a little confused about the Tony Allen thing too – why isn’t he going with his usual second unit with House, Allen, Allen and Poe/Baby that won us so many games throughout the season. I really think they’re overthinking this one.

tommyfan said:
“hey VI….call me/us what you want but in all fairness the coaching was a tad below standard…no?”

I don’t think this loss has anything to do with coaching at all. For one, Doc did not miss any freethrows. Doc did not play bad defense, and doc certainly did not fail to grab rebound after reboudn that resulted in many second chance points. Look to the 5 players on the court.

“anyways in the regular season coach rivers(I’m being respectful) did a great job but as he is finding out the playoffs is about reacting to your opponents moves, X’s & o’s…call it what you want & all we are saying he needs to do a much better job.”

Are we then to believe that coach Rivers lost all his basketball knowledge after the regular season, including the two blowout playoff games in Boston? What exactly are the X and Os that Rivers was supposed to react to? The problem the Celtics have is not one of coaching, it is one of HEART! The Hawks chipped away at the Celtics psychological armour and found an opening which they exploited. Not a damn thing Rivers could do about that. He’s the same coach, and they played the same Hawks team. The Hawks coach did not all of a sudden develop a higher basketball IQ or coaching knowledge over the past two games (why in heavens name didn’t he also react to stem the bleeding in games 1 & 2).

“Ehouses 3 pointer that hit the side of the back brd. was not Doc fault but it was Doc fault for putting him in there.”

And therein lies the hollowness of the argument as to which players Doc should have played. For all we know, Rivers could have played Tony Allen and things would have been worse than the beating they took last might.

Here’s the way I see it… I have argued as to why I love players like Kobe – they have heart and the killer instict; they are willing to be disgruntled when they are losing because they hate losing. We on the other hand, have 3 superstars, one of which stayed in Minny under very undesirable circumstances without ever complaining. What does that tell you about him? You also have Paul Pierce who continues to show his lack of maturity in going after Al Hoford and getting himself fined $25K. What an idiot of a captain. Real leaders who have heart don’t try to prove anything with hand signals, they do it on the court, mano a mano. Hoford showed up Pierce and got him off his game TWICE!

We need our players to SHOW HEART WHEN IT MATTERS! That’s our problem.

Migit, enjoyed your last comment. Lot of sense there.

Master Po said:
“Doc has issues/blame to assume as well….if he were utterly blameless as you seem to suggest in the losses, then is he without reward in the victories? You can’t have it both ways.”

I don’t think Doc’s utterly blameless. When you’re the coach and your team gets spanked, you cannot be totally blameless – happens even to legends like Pat Riley and Phil Jackson. No way anyone is going to convince me that during those times when Riley or Jackson were coaching losing teams, their Xs and Os were the problem. My issue is, Doc gets an unfair share of the blame, but not enough of the credit.

My comments about Doc are limited to what happened in ganes 3 and 4, and it’s hard for me to blame his coaching for the losses. I just can’t see what else Doc could have done in terms of coaching to make things better.

"It’s a combo of things and you know it. "

I absoutely agree.

“What plays are called, who guards who, when to call a timeout and make any necessary adjustements… He is not stupid, the question can he coach this talent and can this talent overcome adversity.”

Can you point to one play that was (or wasn’t) called in game 3 and/or 4 that you thought should have been called differently? Game 4 started well enough; at some point the Celtics were ahead by 13 points by playing team basketball. Then all of a sudden, Paul Pierce started playing selfish…

I believe that Pierce psychologically backed himself into a corner by picking a fight with Hoford the previous day. It was unnecessary for him to respond to Hoford’s taunting. Consequently, he went into game 4 with something to prove, and he proved it by playing selfish, which didn’t work. But worse, it had the added effect of taking the Celtics out of their Ubuntu mentality. There’s not much a coach can do about these types of things, no Xs and Os will solve that.

Towards the end of the game, the look of beffudlement on KGs face spoke volumes about the his mental state, and this is a guy who is almost always jawing non-stop.

Welcome to the NBA playoffs where HEART happens; where hand signals don’t win games; where you back up your talk by winning.

I say it again:

If two players make 34 consecutive points, this is the fault of the coach.

If your team takes far to many three-pointers, and you lose the lead exactly during these stretches, while you gained the lead during the stretch your team attacked the hoop, it is the fault of the coach.

If J.Johnson is lighten it up, and you continue to play Ray Allen against him, who struggled nearly the whole game on D, it is the fault of the coach.

No matter how you slice it, this is the fault of the coach.

I tried to be a Doc supporter, I really did, but it`s just blind to defend him for this performance, imo.

If I have to drink one more Doc Kool Aid, I will have to vomit.