Rivers Gives Celtics First Day Off – Celtics.com

Their 9 p.m. local time tip off in Istanbul, Turkey, led to a late-night finish that pushed midnight. The team took a lengthy bus ride to the airport after speaking to the media and then headed out for the two-and-a-hal-hour flight to Milan, Italy, for the second leg of its journey.

By the time the Celtics landed in Milan, it was already 3:45 a.m. local time. It took another 45 minutes to get to the hotel, which meant players and coaches didn’t get into their rooms until about 5 a.m. at the earliest. And then they had to wait for their bags to arrive at their rooms in order to change out of the clothes they had worn on the flight.

It was a late night of travel, to say the least. It was so late that Doc Rivers put it in a very rare category.

“That was one of the later ones, yeah,” Rivers confessed when asked if it was one of the later nights of travel he had experienced in his tenure as Celtics coach. “We’ve had a couple like that. You usually have one a year.”

Talk about a crazy travel routine huh? It’s good to hear about the team getting some rest, something they have not had since media day apparently. Hell, that’s a pretty long stretch to go without off days.

This will be the first day the team has had off since it convened for media day on Friday, Sept. 28. Boston had strung together six consecutive days of practice and then last night’s game in Istanbul. That’s a lot of basketball, and not a lot of time to recover.

“They haven’t had a day off yet,” Rivers said prior to Friday night’s contest against Fenerbahce Ulker. “So it’s probably time to give them a day off.”

Not much to talk about until the next game rolls around, may the team be enjoying themselves over at Milan.