One of the things that still bothers me about Doc

[Roy Hobbs]

We got this quote from Doc this morning:

Celtics' captain Paul Pierce (left knee sprain) practiced briefly Monday and will be held out of Tuesday's training session, according to coach Doc Rivers. Pierce's status for the Celtics-Golden State Warriors contest Wednesday has not been determined. . . .

"I shouldn't have played him," Rivers said of Pierce's appearance against the Pacers. "But he talked me into it."

Link.

Numerous times since he's been coach, Doc has said the exact same thing.  With Pierce in the past, Wally, Big Al, Ray, KG, etc., etc., we've heard "I shouldn't have played him, but I did".  The justification is either, "he talked me into it" or "we needed to win the game".

I think by and large, Doc has been a good coach for this group of veterans.  However, these excuses get old after awhile.

[ssspence]

i agree. it grates me. he then goes on to blame these situations on the lack of bench, like he did after last season.

i really think the Cs need another guy who can play the 2 and 3 besides Daniels. we have 4 players on the roster who are wings who never play: TA, Scal, Giddens and Walker. Turn em into a rotation player for pete's sake.

[Eja117]

good point Roy. It seems odd to me, because few players want to not play. So Doc can say that pretty much whenever he missmanages minutes.

It's not that different from when Grady Little kept in Pedro, only it's not a playoff game

[butterbeanlove]

It's true... he does the same thing with minutes, says he wants to cut the vets' minutes, or he's going to cut the vets' minutes... but then he doesn't. He says the right things, but in the heat of the moment, he goes in the opposite direction.

And he's not going to change. He'll talk about how he needs to do things different, but when it comes down to it, he is who he is.

[TheReaLPuba]

Yea but if we would have gotten blown out by the Pacers and you read reports that Pierce said he could have played but Doc said he couldn't then you would be blasting Doc right now.

Pierce said he could play hurt and he did....he was still our most productive player and was a defensive liability at times not really because of his injury but because the match was just poor...he shouldn't be guarding Jones anyways.

[pengaloo]

Yea but if we would have gotten blown out by the Pacers and you read reports that Pierce said he could have played but Doc said he couldn't then you would be blasting Doc right now.

Pierce said he could play hurt and he did....he was still our most productive player and was a defensive liability at times not really because of his injury but because the match was just poor...he shouldn't be guarding Jones anyways.

To me, it's not so much that Pierce was a defensive liability. It was that Doc risked further injury. Getting blown out by the Pacers would have been the least of our concerns.

[Tai]

Well, at least there's ONE player who isn't playing old and unmotivated if Pierce felt he could play through injury. 

Still, Doc admitting this only means by default that it probably wasn't a good idea. I'd rather he go with his gut.

[LB3533]

The loss to the Hawks the previous night also helped "talk" Doc into playing Paul.

Had we won the Hawks game, I am pretty sure Doc would have sat Pierce down, no question about it.

Had we won, Paul wouldn't have felt the need to play hurt.

[nickagneta]

This bugged me too since it was pretty obvious after the Atlanta game that the knee was hurting him. Now, in Doc's defense, maybe Pierce lied to him about how he felt and it wasn't obvious how much the knee was effecting Pierce until the end of the first quarter or so. I mean not being there we are kind of jumping to conclusions on this one based on facts not in evidence.

We don't know what Pierce told Doc. We don't know if Pierce misled him regarding just how well that knee was feeling. We don't know what the relationship between the two is and whether Doc let Pierce out there to kinda prove a point that Pierce should listen to advice and stop being Superman all the time when it comes to playing minutes, especially with a deep bench. heck, not having been at the interview or heard the interview where he said it, I'm not so sure what the context of the remark was.

But, if Doc knew for sure that the knee was causing him pain and range of motion and let him in anyway based on Pierce telling him he wanted to gut it out, then yeah, I have a problem there. Comes a time in older players careers when you have to protect them from themselves for the greater good of the team. Now, just how much more damage could have really been done to a bruise is debatable but still, injuries from overcompensation can happen and Doc has to realize his team is deep and they can survive with giving the vets off a game here or there to rest a nagging injury.

[nickagneta]

Well Pierce's injury could not have been that severe, he practiced full tilt today.

[mgent]

We got this quote from Doc this morning:

Celtics' captain Paul Pierce (left knee sprain) practiced briefly Monday and will be held out of Tuesday's training session, according to coach Doc Rivers. Pierce's status for the Celtics-Golden State Warriors contest Wednesday has not been determined. . . .

"I shouldn't have played him," Rivers said of Pierce's appearance against the Pacers. "But he talked me into it."

Link.

Numerous times since he's been coach, Doc has said the exact same thing.  With Pierce in the past, Wally, Big Al, Ray, KG, etc., etc., we've heard "I shouldn't have played him, but I did".  The justification is either, "he talked me into it" or "we needed to win the game".

I think by and large, Doc has been a good coach for this group of veterans.  However, these excuses get old after awhile.

I think from experience Doc has realized that players are pretty smart when it comes to their bodies, especially veterans like Pierce.

Think about how many times Doc must have wanted to sit a guy and the guy convinced him otherwise and nothing happened.  I'm sure letting the player decide works more times than it doesn't.

Also, this is as much Pierce's team as it is Doc's.  I wouldn't second guess him either.

[CelticG1]

We got this quote from Doc this morning:

Celtics' captain Paul Pierce (left knee sprain) practiced briefly Monday and will be held out of Tuesday's training session, according to coach Doc Rivers. Pierce's status for the Celtics-Golden State Warriors contest Wednesday has not been determined. . . .

"I shouldn't have played him," Rivers said of Pierce's appearance against the Pacers. "But he talked me into it."

Link.

Numerous times since he's been coach, Doc has said the exact same thing.  With Pierce in the past, Wally, Big Al, Ray, KG, etc., etc., we've heard "I shouldn't have played him, but I did".  The justification is either, "he talked me into it" or "we needed to win the game".

I think by and large, Doc has been a good coach for this group of veterans.  However, these excuses get old after awhile.

I do agree that Doc should not be doing this but i think he is conveniently doing it because it was a loss. If we won I don't think he would be saying "I shouldn't have played Paul". I think it's more that in hindsight, since we ended up losing anyway, that he's kind of making an excuse for him and Pierce by saying Pierce wasn't healthy enough to contribute. He is basically taking the heat for Pierce having a poor game. I have noticed that when he's said this before it is usually when we have lost a game. I've never seen him say it after a good win or blow out. Maybe thats because we've ended up losing those games due to the injury that the particular player had. It's not like Pierce was that banged up though (from what I've read), he sat out one practice after and is ready to play now. If we had won, a comment like that would never have come up. Basically when Doc makes statements like these I don't think that deep down he really thinks it was wrong for him to play him.

[slamtheking]

Yea but if we would have gotten blown out by the Pacers and you read reports that Pierce said he could have played but Doc said he couldn't then you would be blasting Doc right now.

Pierce said he could play hurt and he did....he was still our most productive player and was a defensive liability at times not really because of his injury but because the match was just poor...he shouldn't be guarding Jones anyways.

To me, it's not so much that Pierce was a defensive liability. It was that Doc risked further injury. Getting blown out by the Pacers would have been the least of our concerns.

spot on.  risking further injury wasn't worth a game.  If the C's can't beat a team like the Pacers without Pierce (which they didn't), they've got bigger problems than overplaying Pierce (which they do).

[winsomme]

We got this quote from Doc this morning:

Celtics' captain Paul Pierce (left knee sprain) practiced briefly Monday and will be held out of Tuesday's training session, according to coach Doc Rivers. Pierce's status for the Celtics-Golden State Warriors contest Wednesday has not been determined. . . .

"I shouldn't have played him," Rivers said of Pierce's appearance against the Pacers. "But he talked me into it."

Link.

Numerous times since he's been coach, Doc has said the exact same thing.  With Pierce in the past, Wally, Big Al, Ray, KG, etc., etc., we've heard "I shouldn't have played him, but I did".  The justification is either, "he talked me into it" or "we needed to win the game".

I think by and large, Doc has been a good coach for this group of veterans.  However, these excuses get old after awhile.

the thing that aggravates me is that the Pierce injury was pretty clearly a sprain, but word out of the team is a bruise...he banged it...

i think it's pretty clear that the biggest potential hit to our Title hopes is an injury to Paul or KG (a little lesser for Ray and Rondo). So this medical staff needs to be hyper-vigilant.

Decisions before being in Doc and Paul's hands needs to have a pretty strict medical component.

I mean, if Paul really shouldn't have played in the IND game, where is the medical report saying to stay off it for a game or two?

[nickagneta]

We got this quote from Doc this morning:

Celtics' captain Paul Pierce (left knee sprain) practiced briefly Monday and will be held out of Tuesday's training session, according to coach Doc Rivers. Pierce's status for the Celtics-Golden State Warriors contest Wednesday has not been determined. . . .

"I shouldn't have played him," Rivers said of Pierce's appearance against the Pacers. "But he talked me into it."

Link.

Numerous times since he's been coach, Doc has said the exact same thing.  With Pierce in the past, Wally, Big Al, Ray, KG, etc., etc., we've heard "I shouldn't have played him, but I did".  The justification is either, "he talked me into it" or "we needed to win the game".

I think by and large, Doc has been a good coach for this group of veterans.  However, these excuses get old after awhile.

the thing that aggravates me is that the Pierce injury was pretty clearly a sprain, but word out of the team is a bruise...he banged it...

i think it's pretty clear that the biggest potential hit to our Title hopes is an injury to Paul or KG (a little lesser for Ray and Rondo). So this medical staff needs to be hyper-vigilant.

Decisions before being in Doc and Paul's hands needs to have a pretty strict medical component.

I mean, if Paul really shouldn't have played in the IND game, where is the medical report saying to stay off it for a game or two?

Exactly where are you getting your info that this is a sprain?