Doc Rivers calls out Jeff Green

WEEI, D&C
Jeff's not gonna ever show you intensity, even though he may have it, if you know what I'm saying. He's a poker-face player. You're just not going to get that out of him. What you want to get out of him is great play. And he has to play better, there's no doubt about that.

This coming after Doc was yelling at Green during practice.

As the team was going through an open practice Tuesday in front of special guests and reporters, Doc Rivers spotted Jeff Green on the wing, and then cutting late to the basket.

The pass from Brandon Bass went out of bounds, hitting Rivers in the leg.

“Come on, Jeff!” Rivers shouted.

On the next possession down the court, Rivers stopped Green, who was playing defense and had a chat with him.

Rivers explained to him that Bass passed the ball to Green because Green was late cutting to the basket. Bass thought that’s where Green was supposed to be, messing up the whole set.

“We need you to be better,” Rivers told him...

...“I don’t actually think I’m hard on him. I think I’m fair on him,” Rivers said. “I think he’s hard on me. So, we’re going to demand out of him this year to be great because I think he has the ability to be great.”
If you ask me, the Celtics are trying to get Green to live up to his contract and that's simply not possible.

You can say it's only four games into the year. Honestly though, we've seen nothing different from his much maligned latter half of the 2011 season.

Green hasn't played with confidence on offense, he doesn't seem like he grasps the defense and he lacks that intensity - as Rivers mentions - that's been characteristic of these teams over the years.

Does he sound like someone that fits in with the Celtics to you?

That's twice now that Rivers has kind of called out Jeff Green in public and said he needs to play better. If Rivers is now trying to motivate him by publicly criticizing him in the media, does this not show they are kind of desperate at this point to get him going somehow?

Or maybe that's reading too much into it and Doc is just saying what we all see on the court. Jeff Green hasn't played particularly well, and he doesn't exactly look like he knows what he's doing out there.

I get that he's coming back from his heart condition and a tumultuous year but that shouldn't keep him void from criticism. It certainly didn't stop him from playing well in the preseason.

Can Jeff Green play better? Yes, absolutely. Rivers has stressed that as well.

Have we seen any evidence to suggest that he will? Not much.