All day Wednesday, ESPN was including in its Finals coverage a clip of Doc Rivers after the game telling his guys to "Get your rest."
I thought it was an interesting point for him to be stressing, but I figured he just wanted to make sure the guys got his message. What I didn't know is that he was responding to the fact that his guys were just out of gas at the end of the game.
Rivers was livid in the fourth quarter when Pierce called a timeout, wasting a valuable tool in a tight game, so he could receive a rest“Hell, I had to blow a timeout, one that I dearly needed,” said Rivers. “I watched the film, and I thought this was the first time I had four or five guys during the game signal to pull them out. When Paul got fouled late he signaled for a timeout and I thought he got hurt, but he just said, ‘I need a timeout.’
“We needed that darned timeout, when I think about it, and I told our guys that. Anyway, I thought this was a tough turnaround, and rest is very important. It wasn’t LA, all right, it was rest.”
In the locker room... Doc mentioned that its great that the players wives are here and going out to dinner is fine. I wonder if he was referring to this video of Pierce and fiancee Julie Landrum. Looks to me that they were just standing outside a hotel. The much better video is of Paul Pierce bumping into Vern Troyer out in LA last summer... but only calling him "Mini Me".
In Pierce's defense... he seems to be approaching this the right way.
“I’m just approaching these games like any other game,” said Pierce. “I’m not really spending a lot of time with family. I’m just going to stay with my teammates, be around the hotel and do the things I would normally do if I was somewhere else on the road. I’ll have plenty of time to visit with family and friends in the summer.”
The reality is that the NBA, in its infinite wisdom, scheduled a Finals game in Los Angeles 2 days after a game in Boston. Game 5 is already on Sunday... why not play Wednesday-Friday instead of Tuesday-Thursday? I'm sure the cross-country flying and playing the next day thing contributed to both teams being a little off in Game 3.
