Doc: (WEEI)

Rivers said his team earned the boos that rained down upon them from the TD Garden crowd. “Yeah, that was pretty good, and we deserved it,” he said. “Listen, I’m not a fan of booing anything. … But that was frustrating for the fans as well. I always think you support your team good or bad, but last night was so bad — and it’s rare where I’d say this — I had no problem with it at all.”

Perk: (WEEI)

Asked about the boos from the home crowd Wednesday night, Perkins said he was surprised they started so early, in the first quarter, but that it didn’t bother him. “Not really. I think we deserved to get booed last night,” he said. “We didn’t give our best performance last night. We’ve got to do a better job.”

Asked if he felt the team could coast through the regular season and then turn it on for the playoffs, Perkins said: “No, I don’t think. I feel like we have 19 games left. We’ve got to get it going, sooner or later, before we get into the playoffs.”

Rivers also said his team quit during the game.

Asked if his team quit, Rivers said it didn’t start out that way, but that’s how it ended up. “I thought they gave in as the game went on. Yeah, there’s no doubt, you can call it ‘quit’ or whatever,” Rivers said. “But I don’t think they mailed it in when they showed up. If you look at the first eight minutes of that game, I thought we competed. We missed every shot, every wide-open shot. … When things went bad, I didn’t think we had a lot of resolve to fight it last night, and that was obvious, But when you watch the beginning of the game, the ball was moving. We missed wide-open shot after wide-open shot after wide-open shot. … What bothered me about it was as we missed shots we hung our heads more and more.” Added Rivers: “On the [defensive] end is where the breakdowns came. As the game got worse, our fight got less, and that bothers me.”

Agreed about the boos, and about the quitting.  And the boos happened because the quitting happened.