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Doc didn't expect to lose this one at all. He gave House, Marbury and Moore a phone call the night before to be ready.

The Confidence of Champions. Can't beat that

Gathering the Celtics in the victorious locker room, [Doc Rivers] told them to take the day off and study up their scouting books on Orlando.

The players were perplexed: "Scouting books? What scouting books?"

"The ones in your cars," Rivers replied.

Turns out Rivers had sent a team employee to each of the players' cars during the game to drop off a scouting book in each vehicle.

That is the bold kind of stuff that champions do, and the Celtics lived up to their pedigree in ending one of the most memorable playoff series in we've seen in any round in NBA history.

All that proves is that he carved out some coaching time to prepare for the next series, rather than focusing solely on Game 7.

That's awesome.


And I'm sure had we lost this story never would have gone to press.

Ha, ha, that is great!

This story, however, suggests the players knew about the Orlando scouting materials BEFORE Game 7.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=A ... &type=lgns

That, if true, is indeed very cool. It's Doc telling them he expects that they will win.

Especially if he had Belichickian confidence they wouldn't actually open the material until the Bulls were beaten.

I heard this in the postgame press conf, sorry this is just stupid, Boston earned the win, but Doc is also very lucky the Bulls had a nervous breakdown in the 2nd quarter. You have a Game 7 in a really tough series, how could you not want all your player focus on that?

And this has nothing to do with me being a Bulls fan, I just like browsing other team boards/news, and heard this last night

The players were focused on the Bulls. And I have no problem with a coach being confident in his team to win a game 7. Really a non issue to me.

That was a great move. It just lets the players know that the coach has the utmost confidence in their abilities. Sports psychology at work.

In the end what is he going to tell the team after the last 6 games, "Don't let BG burn the place down." All the coaching from and X and O standpoint is done it was time to do some Zen **** hopefully it has a carryover.

Doc could have used the scouting reports either way.

The Celtics won -- your scouting report is already in your car.

The Celtics lost -- the scouting reports for the Magic are in your car, this is what you're going to miss.