“You don’t do a lot of rotation changes, but you do make some tweaks as far as what you run on the offense end and defensively,” Doc Rivers said at the team’s shootaround. “Honestly, we’ve got to get more out of our bench. The guys are on the floor too long. We just have to get more play out of our bench. Our bench has to come through for us.
“They have to play,” Rivers continued. “We’re not going to win this series playing five guys 45 minutes a night. It’s not going to happen. I believe in our bench and I think they’ll come through, but we need them to.”
There will be three days between Games 2 and 3, so that does leave an opening if Rivers feels the need to extend minutes, but that was also part of the rationale for working the starters so hard in Game 1 when the Celtics built an 11-point lead only to wind up losing by eight.
“We could extend minutes tonight, but we did just play on Saturday.,” Rivers said. “The break could go either way. If you win tonight you’d like to play tomorrow if you could. It does change your thinking a little bit honestly with the long lay off.”
Ease up on the deep, convoluted analysis of this series, Doc. We ain't that smart.