Bob Ryan, Boston Globe- “’I’m not worried about Kevin,’’ [Doc] declared. ‘You know what I’m saying? I mean, he’s not in right now and everybody else is. And they know their jobs. The voice of Kevin, yeah, it always helps, because he holds everyone accountable. But that voice isn’t out there right now and somebody else has to do it.’ ‘I can’t really read heads on what’s going on,’ added Pierce. ‘We’ve been without Kevin; we won games last year. That’s not an excuse.’’’

Mark Murphy, Boston Herald-  “’We’ve got to understand that we’re a defensive team first, regardless of who we put on the floor at the end of the night,’ said Paul Pierce, who scored a team-high 24 points. ‘That’s regardless of if we shoot the ball well or not. We are a defensive team, and that’s what we have to continue to understand with the guys that are out. That’s something that is never going to change about this team. Right now, we are playing in spurts defensively. It’s going to be tough if we don’t start to develop some consistency on that end of the court.’”

Steve Bulpett, Boston Herald- ‘Paul Pierce put it another way last night. The captain said the Celtics aren’t playing with enough ‘pride and toughness.’ It’s not quite the same as Larry Bird saying his team played like sissies, but if Pierce said the same thing to his teammates or if they read the papers, it should pack a similar punch.”

Chris Forsberg, ESPNBoston- “‘I told our guys, I thought our mental focus and our mental toughness right now is not very good,’ said Rivers. ‘I thought the game plan in the first half was perfect. Get back in transition, contest shots, and start inside-to-outside. Second half, I thought our defense was horrendous. I didn’t think we got back at all on defense.’”

Rich Levine, CSNNE- “’In the third quarter, we just came out and didn’t have good energy,’ said Ray Allen, who scored 21 points in the 99-90 defeat. ‘We didn’t do the things we’d done earlier to get us that lead. We’ve just got to put together 48 minutes if we’re going to be successful.’ Those “things” that Allen made note of, can best be summed up with one big “thing”—defense. It’s the calling card of any championship team, but especially this one, which not so long ago had aspirations of becoming the greatest defense in NBA history. But in the third quarter that defense was non-existent… and that’s probably being generous.”

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