"This game had nothing to do with Kevin Garnett," the coach said emphatically. "Kevin Garnett didn't play, so he had nothing to do with it."
He sounded suspiciously sure of himself — almost like he had something to hide.
Garnett was nowhere to be seen at the TD Garden as the C's fell short against the Rockets, losing to them at home for the third straight season. He was at home resting his strained calf muscle, an injury from which he hopes to return this week. But you could feel Garnett's absence in every nook and cranny of the Garden. The Celtics felt like a team that lacked intensity and defensive focus. They felt like a team that took each possession too lightly.
They felt like they desperately needed KG.
Desperation is a strong way of putting it, since the Celtics are still 28-9 with a stranglehold on the Atlantic Division. But the C's are mired in a bitter race for the top overall seed in the playoffs, and every loss hits them hard because they remember losing a Game 7 on the road last June.
Normally in games like this, the Celtics would have KG there to give them a jolt, to remind them to work hard and earn the win. But that jolt just never came.
"We just weren't ready," Rivers said. "I told our guys that I thought overall, that was probably our worst overall defensive effort in three or four years. And it's on our starters. It's not on the second unit. I thought the second unit actually got us back in it, in the first half and in the second half. All they did was come in and play hard and play aggressive."
It was unanimous in the Celtics' locker room — the defense was the problem. The numbers support that — the Rockets were able to shoot 52.7 percent, they made 10 of their 20 attempts from 3-point land, and they scored 108 points. Seven of them finished in double figures, led by Aaron Brooks with 24. He alone was 5-for-8 from long range.
"We couldn't get one stop all game," Paul Pierce said. "We had a mini run in the second quarter when we brought their field goal percentage down a little bit, but then it went right back up in the third and fourth quarters. Once you give a team like that confidence, it can carry over to the rest of the game. That's what happened."
"I thought there was just a stretch where we just couldn’t stop anybody," added Ray Allen. "I can't say that we knew that they were going to run. I blame the starting five, because we gave them too much confidence early, and then that fourth-quarter stretch came where it seemed like they hit everything. Guys weren’t where they needed to be, or in position, on rotation, moving the ball around. They scored, and then we did a terrible job of rebounding."
The hope is that now, with the Celtics facing the possibility of three straight losses for the first time all season, the Celtics will wake up and snap out of this defensive funk. They can't relax and wait for their opponents to hand them games. They have to take action.
"You have to do something about it," Pierce said. "You have to go out there as players and make them miss shots. You don't sit there and say, 'We hope they start missing shots.' It's something that we're not doing. We've got to do what we're doing on defense better, harder and faster. Make them miss."
That "make them miss" mentality is Kevin Garnett's greatest legacy as a Celtic. If Garnett returns Wednesday, when the C's take on the Sacramento Kings, then this problem may take care of itself. But even if he doesn't, the Celtics have to be proactive about playing defense again.
