Doc Rivers and the Boston Celtics are attempting to make sure Jared Sullinger is never their tallest player on the floor to compensate for his lack of lift and length.

“We try to protect him so that won’t happen,” said Rivers. “The reason we played him with Kevin (Garnett) in the second quarter is because the bigger guy was always guarding Kevin. We got the matchup that way.

“Sometimes you have to create the matchup. Some teams don’t have two bigs like that, they only have one. So when you’re playing with Darko (Milicic) or you’re playing with Kevin, you really don’t have that problem. The good thing is that for a long stretch he was guarding a 5. Early on I thought they were taking advantage of it, but as the game went on I thought he got better at it.”