--F Kevin Garnett is apparently healthy, but he's clearly not the same player he was before suffering a right knee injury last season. The Celts insist he'll get back to normal, however. "I think it will take all year," said coach Doc Rivers. "By playoff time he will be fine. But he'll have a great stretch, then a tired stretch. That's just my opinion. I don't know how long it will take." Said Garnett, "I'm not going to make any excuses about my health. Nobody, I think, at this point is playing at 100 percent. As long as my effort is there, as long as my grittiness and griminess to go out and play hard is there, I care less about everything else."
--Orlando center Dwight Howard is the latest to praise Kendrick Perkins' defense.
"He is a great defender," Howard said. "I'd say he's probably one of the best low-post defenders in the game today and he's underrated, but he's gotten better from his first year to now. He's a big body, a traditional center, and he knows how to use his body well."
Howard thinks it helps that his former tutor, Clifford Ray, is now coaching Perkins.
"Coach Ray has taught him about all of my moves in the book," Howard said. "He does a good job and the other guys on that team shrink the floor, so that makes it real tough. They don't double-team as much as other teams do, but they sit in the paint and they make it tough to get into the paint because they know that I want to get in there."
QUOTE TO NOTE: "I didn't mind this win. I thought there were some stretches where we played really good basketball." -- Coach Doc Rivers after the ugly victory over the lowly New York Knicks.
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