LOS ANGELES — Pssst. We have to keep our voices down because what we're about to discuss here is NBA blasphemy.

Phil Jackson has nine titles. Doc Rivers has none.

Guess who's been pushing most of the right buttons in the NBA Finals?

Without question, Rivers. So far, anyway, if you go by the scoreboard.

The Los Angeles Lakers, having just executed the most stunning retreat since Napoleon, now look into a frightening abyss.

They might not only lose the NBA Finals, but lose them to the Boston Celtics.

And they might not just lose to the Celtics, but do it at home.

For the Beverly Hills high rollers on the front row and the leatherlungs in the upper deck who keep up a constant chant of "Boston sucks!" the indignity could not get much worse than that.

Jackson must now find some way to rally his shattered regiment, after a blown 24-point loss in Game 4.

"I just told them as a team, they had their heart ripped out," he said today. "It's tough to recover from that, but they will."

It is a perilous exercise to rate coaching in the NBA. The element of player talent is too pervasive. What good are X's and O's, if the star shoots 6-for-19?

"This is a players game," Rivers mentioned today. "It always will be and it really should be. They did not invent this game for us to be talking about coaches."

So don't bother him with the subject of who might be outcoaching whom.

"I'm not in that class and I don't deserve to be in that class," he said of Jackson. "I ignore it."

Maybe "outcoaching" is not the most accurate term to use, anyway. Guys in shirts and ties don't guard one another. The players do that. But it is clear that this series has been a tour de force for Doc Rivers.

The third quarter suggests a lot about halftime adjustments.

The Celtics have outscored the Lakers by a combined 43 points in the third quarter.

Defense is about hard work.

He has his team doing it.

The physical and mental demands of NBA Finals require something of a plain-talk selling job from the coach to his players, to convince them they can handle anything.

Listen to Kevin Garnett.

"Doc is not afraid to tell us when we're messing up, and I've been around awhile and seen some coaches sort of say the right thing. He gives it to you straight.

"He gives us hope through his words, and we believe it."

The Celtics have been the tougher team, in or out of wheelchairs. Flash to halftime of Game 4, when Paul Pierce on a shaky knee stepped forward to volunteer for the mission of guarding Kobe Bryant.

They have been the deeper team. Bench points in Game 4: Celtics 35, Lakers 15.

They have executed better. On Game 4's defining play in the final minute, with the Lakers desperately needing a stop, Ray Allen ruthlessly slashed around Sasha Vujacic toward the basket, and the Los Angeles defense parted like the Red Sea.

So you wonder about Sunday night in the Staples Center, and what is left of the Lakers' psyche. The Celtics haven't finished off the Lakers in Los Angeles in 39 years.

Jackson might be hoping antagonism can revive his team. He said today that some of Garnett's comments will "probably weigh strongly with Kobe."

But wait. What comments?

"They're in the transcripts."

So we checked back on Thursday night's NBA transcripts of Garnett's press conference, and about the only thing he said about Bryant was how the Lakers like him to close out games and the Celtics tried to make it harder by giving Bryant "every look we've got in the book." But "a player like Kobe, you're not going to stop him."

Oh, and of the title, Garnett said, "I can taste it."

Not much there to get a team inflamed about, but a man has to do what he can, when the other coach seems to have all the answers.