Rajon Rondo has been playing through a painful hip pointer, and he is just nine of 29 from the field over the past four games even though the Boston Celtics badly need his scoring.

“I thought Rondo, as far as health-wise, I thought he was fine,” coach Doc Rivers said. “With the way we’re not scoring, and you could see Kevin [Garnett] struggle today with his shot, we really need [Rondo] to be more aggressive in our pick-and-roll package, in our offense. And it was funny, the beginning of the game he did that. And that’s not second nature to him, to be an aggressive scorer. But we really need him to be that.

“We need him to get in the open court, attack the basket, look for baskets in transition instead of guys shooting threes that aren’t going in. And that’s something we’ve just got to keep pushing.”