Doc: Yesterday's win ugly ball, not bad ball

Yesterday's win wasn't pretty. The Celtics had 20 turnovers. They shot only 42.5%. They hit only four out of 15 threes. No, the game wasn't pretty at all.

But it sure was a win Doc Rivers could be proud of.

Via the Boston Globe:

“A lot of good things happened for us. Our defense won the game. We talked about it for two days - the only way we’re going to win this game is in a defensive game. We’re not going to come in without Paul Pierce and shoot them out of the game, that wasn’t going to happen. We were going to have a great defensive team and we were. It was not the prettiest ball - I can tell you both teams played tremendous defense, by the way. We didn’t lose points in that stretch - no one was scoring. It was ugly ball. But I don’t necessarily think that’s bad basketball, I think that’s two teams playing extremely hard and playing great defense.’’

I'm not like a lot of people. I'd rather see a low-scoring, grind-it-out game, as long as both teams are giving it their all. I want to see players hitting the floor after loose balls, hard box-outs on missed shots, and contested jumpers rather than open ones.

And by those parameters, yesterday was certainly satisfying.