Doc Rivers believes Boston's Game 1 win answered some questions about his team's toughness since trading away Kendrick Perkins.

“What I loved was that we showed our resolve,” Rivers told Yahoo! Sports. “We showed some toughness. And that’s been questioned – and maybe rightly so – when we made that trade of Perk. That’s been questioned a lot.”

The Celtics are attempting to survive a major transformation while competing against new playoff contenders in the Bulls and Heat.

“You just don’t know about yourself as a team,” Rivers said in the corridor. “You know the human mind is, so you just never know. But I told our coaches before the series: ‘I really like our team, but we need to jump into this, though.’ The way this thing started for us, it may be good in the long run.”