Kendrick Perkins is done listening to R&B before games. Straight Southern hip hop from now on. (LA Times)

Meanwhile, Boston Center Kendrick Perkins deviated from his normal pregame ritual, changing from his normal Southern hip hop playlist that features Bun B of UGK and T.I. and to R&B.

“I was trying to woosa for a minute, trying not to get no ticks so I could go into the game relaxed,” Perkins said, referring to the fact his six postseason technical fouls means he’s one away from receiving a one-game suspension.

Perkins listened to R&B before Game 1 and then he and his teammates played like a bunch of R&B artists. In Game 2, the Celtics are only going to play like two singers (warning, distasteful joke coming up): Chris Brown, with the Lakers being Rihanna, or R. Kelly, with the Lakers being the teenage chick he peed on.

Elsewhere in the Celtics frontcourt, Kevin Garnett isn’t taking Pau Gasol’s Game 1 beatdown very well… but in a good way. (Boston Herald)

“He’s beating himself up, but that’s cool,” Doc Rivers said of the big forward’s state of mind. “That’s who he is. That’s what makes him great. We’ve watched film twice now as a group. He’s probably watched it on his own three or four times today.

“He already knew the play before he even started. That’s fine. That’s what Kevin does. That’s what Kobe (Bryant) does. That’s what all the great players do. They’re students. They watch the game. They understand their mistakes. They own up to them. And they try to learn from them and move on.” [...]

“Well, we are proud,” [Garnett] said. “I don’t think that you take this court and understand the history of this rivalry on top of putting on this jersey and the people that have come before you, so it is a sense of responsibility when putting this jersey on. So it is a sense of pride there.

“You know, you learn a lot about yourself when you lose, you learn a lot about yourself when you’re down, the people around you and so forth, and this shows what you’re made of, to be honest.”