Morning Mix

Rivers a Hawk In Celtics Clothing

Take what you remember of Doc Rivers as a Hawks point guard, sew it to the fact he still bleeds from Atlanta's playoff loss to the Celtics in 1988, and you may find it unthinkable that he's now part of Boston's fabric. He seems so quintessentially non-Celtic. But watch him run pro basketball's flagship, talk to him, pick the brain of the player who has been with him longest and add the fact he has presided over the biggest NBA turnaround ever -- from 24 wins last regular season to 66 this -- and you just might generate a new thesis: Rivers may be the right man in the right place at the right time, a golden giftee when Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were traded to the Celtics. Coaching at this level is part ego management and massage, and Rivers is does these things extremely well. Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Bulls Interview Carlisle

A rumor-filled Wednesday basically ended with the Bulls' coaching search in the same place it began, with general manager John Paxson continuing his stated plan to explore different candidates and listen to different philosophies about personnel. One of those candidates is Rick Carlisle. Chicago Tribune

Nuggets Not Sharing Ball

They again topped the century mark in scoring, a lofty standard for many teams in the playoffs when the game inevitably slows to a grind.Still, not so much for the Denver Nuggets, who needed more -- much more -- to counter their turnstile-type defense.Nuggets Coach George Karl said his team needed to be more freewheeling in sharing the basketball."When we're not incorporating the pass, or trusting the pass or making the extra pass, whatever phrase you want to use, we seem to have a cloudy disposition," Karl said before the game.It got cloudier afterward.Only 12 assists were counted among Denver's 37 field goals. LA Times

Thorn Smart, Cuban Dumb

The best player in these NBA playoffs is Chris Paul, who is all over the floor and the boxscore, shooting and passing and dribbling the New Orleans Hornets past the Dallas Mavericks and toward the second round. He has many to thank for his good fortune, but one in particular: Rod Thorn. Thorn is responsible for putting Jason Kidd on Paul. Thorn is the New Jersey Nets' GM who traded Kidd to the Mavericks, who were certain, with Kidd, that they had found the solution for their championship dreams. In hindsight, the Mavericks probably found the solution for the Hornets' championship dreams.Soon after arriving in Dallas, Kidd revealed himself to be old, slow and a shell of the player he once was. And against a quick and frisky young point guard like Paul, Kidd has dropped a notch. In two games so far, Paul is torching Kidd for 33.5 points, 13.5 assists and a dozen breathtaking plays a game. He's taking advantage of Kidd almost as much as Thorn took advantage of the Mavericks."Well," said Thorn, "as much as I'd like to take credit, Jason did force our hand a bit by giving us an ultimatum. But in general, what anyone would like to do is trade a guy a year before he goes downhill. You think a guy's going to be great forever, but the reality is they aren't. The pull of gravity gets everyone. No one is immune." Newsday

Bynum Out for the Playoffs?

Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson indicated Monday the team doesn't expect injured center Andrew Bynum to make a serious contribution any time soon. When asked after practice if there was a risk of messing up team chemistry by playing 7-footers Bynum and Pau Gasol at the same time, Jackson replied: "I think without a doubt that Andrew would come off the bench and we would play him a little bit off the bench if there was any chance that he could come back and play again, but it's such a remote thing. We're not seriously thinking about it." LA Times

Celtics Win by Slow Strangulation

We've seen it before. Many, many times. It started on Opening Night, when they effortlessly dispatched the Wizards by 20, and it continues in the playoffs, where the Celtics have won the first two games of their first-round series with the Atlanta Hawks by 23 (104-81) and last night's 19 (96-77). The 2007-08 Celtics are the most subtly and ruthlessly efficient team the Celtics have ever had. Their M.O. is completely different than the methodology employed by all those other Celtics teams of yore, with all those gaudy win-loss records.When the Russell-Cousy teams beat you badly, you knew it. When the Havlicek-Cowens teams beat you badly, you knew it. When the Larry-Kevin-Chief-DJ teams beat you badly, you knew it. Somewhere in there they'd hit you with a 14-0 or 20-2 fast break-oriented run and the crowd would be exploding and you knew you were getting your butt kicked.

But this team doesn't operate that way.

With this team, you think you're in the game, even if you aren't. This team isn't about runs; it's about stops. Defensive stops aren't sexy. Points are sexy, and points in rapid succession are sexier still.Students of Atlanta Hawks history should know. The Celtics won Game 6 of a first-round series in 1973 with a devastating fourth-quarter run. The Celtics won the series-concluding fifth game of an Atlanta series in 1986 with a downright surreal 36-6 third quarter that concluded with a run of 24-0 on a Bill Walton trailer dunk. The 2008 Celtics don't deal in tsunamis. This team makes you feel as if you're tied up on the beach and the tide is coming in and coming in and coming in, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. They get you with 6-2s, not 14-0s. They just keep making more stops than you, many more, in fact. Bob Ryan

Posey on the Youthful Members of the Bench

When Posey signed with the Celtics last Aug. 25, he knew that the top three players were already in place, and that Eddie House had signed. But as far as playing on a bench unit of youngsters, many of them completely untested, was concerned, he simply had no idea what to expect."Eddie had signed before me so I knew Eddie was here. That was another big reason why I came. But at that point it was just me and Eddie. You didn't really know how things were going to turn out, so just come in and work like you do night in and night out and you see what happens." "I knew I just controlled my own destiny. As it turned out, we have guys accepting their roles and they've done the best they can. I've been trying to tell these young guys that every team is not like this. You don't have guys that really care about you and want to help you, so they should appreciate it. It could always go the opposite way. You could always be on a team that's very selfish and is not into winning, not into teaching and not into trying to help the next man get better. That could really be a terrible thing, especially being young. So it should be no surprise that we have this much to show for the long haul of the season. Patriot Ledger

Dead Guy Cashes Check

That Virgilio Cintron was dead that day is not in doubt. But no one can say precisely when he died. Was Mr. Cintron breathing when his buddies, James P. O'Hare and David Daloia, pushed him in a chair to the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan on Jan. 8? That's what they said. Never mind that in a detective's judgment, he was unresponsive, flopped around unsteadily in the chair, and appeared to show early signs of rigor mortis. The police said those clues indicated that Mr. Cintron, 66, had died earlier that day, and that Mr. O'Hare and Mr. Daloia had wheeled their friend's stiffening corpse to the office in a bold, if poorly thought-out, scheme to cash his $355 Social Security check. New York Times