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NBA FINALS: LAKERS v CELTICS


June 17, 2008


Doc Rivers


BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Six

Q. With the travel and everything and the potential for this to be another ugly game, does that put more emphasis on your defense early on to avoid one of those big first quarters from them you've had the last few games and make it more difficult to come back if the offense isn't there?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Yeah, defense is what we do, so it's always -- it puts it on that. At the game I take that personal. We don't mind that; I think that's beautiful.
But clearly starting games we have to do a better job in transition. They've attacked us early in all but one of the games, early in transition, scored 14 to 18 points in the first six seconds. You don't see that stat but we do. And we have to take them out of that.

Q. How is Ray doing?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Ray is doing good. I mean, he's going to be fine. Obviously he's not had a lot of sleep over the last three days, probably -- I don't know. We were thinking about it before this morning, just how much he's probably had. It can't be much. But he's ready. You can see it, he's ready to play.

Q. What decisions have you made about starting him?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Oh, yeah, I'm starting him (laughing), no doubt. Starting Perk, starting Ray and everyone else.

Q. Are you starting?
COACH DOC RIVERS: I'm going to start, yes (laughter).

Q. What conversations did you have with Ray that made you think, hey, he's ready to go?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Not much. I said, "how you doing?" I didn't even ask him about basketball honestly. I just asked him how he was doing. He said he's fine. That's all I needed to know.

Q. We all heard you had travel problems. Could you tell us, run down the day for us and did it take anything out of you?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Why don't you call Mitch Kupchak and Phil. They'll probably tell you exactly what happened (laughter).
It was a long day, it really was. I thought the funniest part of it is we get a call, we were supposed to leave at 11:00 and they called us at 9:00 and told us we had to run to the bus because the first plane had broken down, so we were going to get on the other one that was leaving, so we had to unfortunately pull people off that one. And when we get there at the gate, we see the Laker plane taking off, and I was saying, oh, this is nice (laughter).
We actually got all the way out to the runway. We jumped on, things were smooth, we get to the runway, and then the pilot comes on and said we're going to have a little delay, and he said it's either going to be ten minutes or two to three hours, and it was more.
The only bad part about it was that we couldn't get off the plane for the most part. I bet we sat out there for, I don't know, three, four hours, maybe longer, before we took off.

Q. What time did you get home, and what do you think it took out of you?
COACH DOC RIVERS: I don't know if it took anything out of us. Heck, I don't know. I mean, I got to my place right around 12:00. You know, it was a late night. We probably would not have been asleep anyway because of the time change and all that. So heck, maybe it gave us more rest, who knows. We'll find that out.

Q. Do you normally make it a point to talk to any of your players individually before the game? And if so, did you talk to Kevin tonight? And what have you said to him?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Well, I do. I don't every game, obviously, and I pick and choose spots with all different guys. He may be one guy. I haven't talked to anyone yet except for Ray.

Q. Do you have any idea what you might say to him?
COACH DOC RIVERS: Oh, yeah. I'm not going to share it, but I do, I absolutely do. And I probably will, if you want to know that.

End of FastScripts




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