The pain of another draining loss. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Julian Benbow, Boston Globe – “‘We’re at home,’ Garnett said. ‘We look for our fans to give energy, to give us a spark when times are tough. It doesn’t help when the boos happen.’ [...] ‘We are a group of veterans and we are a group that is a real team,’ Garnett said. ‘We aren’t fair weather. So when that occurs we all just get together and say we just have to grind this out. Through any type of adversity, you just grip up and come together. I think that’s when your bond comes and it’s very much needed at that point.’ In a way, Pierce (9 points on 4-of-12 shooting) understood the fans’ reaction. ‘When they booed us in the past, it was because of the effort,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t because we were a bad team. I’ve been on bad teams where they cheered us. They came in sold out and cheered us every night. Regardless of if you win or lose, the fans want that effort. When they see the other teams beating us to loose balls and us turning the ball over, I think that’s the thing that they see and they start to boo about.’”

Steve Bulpett, Boston Herald – “As the Celtics left the floor at halftime last night, their senses were assaulted by both the scoreboard and noise. Trailing the wobbly Wizards 52-31, this team once drunk with success was now drinking boos. ‘Then don’t come to the (expletive) games,’ said Kevin Garnett in a relatively low tone as he headed from the court.”

Rich Levine, CSNNE – “Anyone who watched the game would agree. Friday night wasn’t about rhythm. It was about a lack of energy, a lack of fire and, as the Captain would go on to say, the Celtics playing with a lack of urgency. But the question is why? Why wasn’t the energy there? What happened to the fire? Where was the urgency? The answer brings us back to Rivers alleged smoke screen, and, in turn, to the biggest problem currently facing this team. They don’t care. No, I’m not talking about the season on the whole, or the playoffs, I’m talking about the now; the end of the regular season. They’ve checked out. They don’t have a sense of urgency because, in their minds, there’s nothing to feel urgent about.”

Jessica Camerato, WEEI – “‘I told our guys I really took the blame for this loss,’ [Doc Rivers] said. ‘I gave our guys yesterday off and shoot-around off today and nothing, you know sometimes we meet in the morning for guys to get shots. I forbade anybody from going to the gym today because we need our rest and I thought it really killed our rhythm. So you could just see it, they couldn’t get their engines started. They were stuck in mud the entire game. And I really thought that doing that was probably the reason for. I still would take the rest, having said that, but I just thought we’d play better.’ The players say it’s not fair to pin it on the coach, though. He isn’t the one on the court. ‘Doc is going to look at himself first to figure out what he can do better, but as a team we’ve got to take responsibility as well,’ said Ray Allen. ‘Doc can’t get out there on the floor. It’s whoever is out there. We have to cheer each other on and we have to have the effort every night.’”

Chris Forsberg, ESPNBoston – “While Robinson and Daniels have fallen from Rivers’ playoff rotation unveiled in Sunday’s win over the Cavaliers, he suggested that Robinson will win Boston a playoff game. ‘I think Nate can just wake up and make shots — that’s who he is,’ said Rivers. ‘Like I told you guys last week, Nate is not in our rotation right now, but he’ll win a playoff game for us. There will be a game where we are flat and we are going to need somebody to come in and make something happen. And Nate will do that. I told him that [Thursday], that there will be a game where he’s going to win this — he’s going to win us a playoff game. [With] Marquis, it’ll depend on how the guys are playing and how he’s working and practicing and everything else. But Nate’s more of an X-factor offensively.’”

A. Sherrod Blakely, CSNNE – “The Wizards had crisp ball movement. They pounded the ball inside the lane. They knocked down open jumpers when they had them. They did everything the Celtics were planning – no, make that expected – to do, which is surprising when you consider the Wizards (25-54) have nothing to play for but pride while the C’s are still playing for playoff seeding. ‘It’s like they expected us to be scared of them, or expect us to lose,’ said Wizards center JaVale McGee. ‘We just tried to prove everybody wrong and tonight we did. ‘Here we are in April, and the C’s continue to find themselves addressing issues like toughness, composure, late-game execution – the kind of things that most of the NBA’s elite teams don’t have to worry about nearly as much as the Celtics do. ‘When we go out there and put that type of effort, I don’t think we really played with any toughness against this Washington Wizards team that has been struggling all year long,’ said C’s forward Paul Pierce. ‘There’s really no excuse for it.’”

Barbara Matson, Boston Globe – “Blatche was the Wizards’ catalyst last night, scoring 15 points in the first half to push his team to a 52-31 lead. Blatche, who finished with 31 points and 11 rebounds, did not shrink away this time when Garnett came calling. When the confrontation got heated, he kept playing basketball, knocking down three straight shots — a 22-foot jumper, a fast-break layup, and a 17-foot jumper — to hoist the Wizards to a 47-19 lead with 4:33 left in the first half. ‘We came in here with a lot of energy,’ Blatche said. ‘We wanted to play hard and compete like we have been the last couple of games. We just came out on fire.’”

Mark Murphy, Boston Herald – “The cold-shooting Celtics finished with a deceptively high field-goal percentage of 42.7, and continued to work on the huge dichotomy of having the second-best road record in the NBA (25-14), but an increasingly troubling 24-16 mark at home. Indeed, the Celtics have now lost four of their last five games in the Garden. The very notion of playoff momentum stretches a little more each night. ‘We want to win these games and gather some momentum going into the playoffs,’ said Paul Pierce. ‘I don’t believe you can just turn it on in the playoffs, though some teams have done that in the past.’ Instead, the Wizards last night were the latest team to turn it on against the host Celtics, marching farther than Napoleon, and with better results, on a 32-4 first-half surge.”

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