"No, I'm not concerned in the big picture," the coach said. "I'm just going to make sure I don't have concern by doing it this way. He's just not feeling great, and we're just not going to take the chance. So it's a day of rest. (It's) just soreness. Nothing structural or anything. It's not at a point where he's seeing any doctors or anything like that. We just want to get it right, and if you can err on one of the two sides, we're going to err on this side."

There is no set plan for how to bring Garnett back.

"We're just going to go day by day," Rivers said. "He was sore the other day after the back-to-backs, but then he came back and played pretty well. It's a little frustrating, and it's tough for the guys because the lineups keep changing. When he doesn't play, we play differently, too, so that's been a little frustrating. But other than that, I look at the silver lining. It gets more guys on the floor hopefully to get them closer to being ready. So we'll take advantage of it."

In light of the fact there is no chance the Celtics could fall below the third seed, it is also possible they could give Garnett an extended rest until the last few games of the regular season.

"We think about all that," Rivers said. "We'll see. We're going to make that evaluation and determination at some point soon, but we don't know right now."

CELTICS 103, THUNDER 84: The Celtics got a lift from their bench to avoid a bad loss to Oklahoma City Sunday night at home.

Eddie House came off the pine for 16 points and Mikki Moore added 12 as the Celtics came back to win.

After Moore's shooting had gotten them even by halftime, the Celtics fell behind by eight in the third quarter. House then came in and hit three straight shots -- two of them three-pointers -- to push the Celtics toward a lead they would never give up.

"In the first quarter I thought we were flat," said coach Doc Rivers. "The bench came in and turned the game around."