WALTHAM, Mass. -- Asked after Saturday's loss to the lowly New Jersey Nets if the shocking result would be a wake-up call, Boston Celtics center Kendrick Perkins wondered aloud how many wake-up calls his team needed.

To be sure, Boston has looked like a team constantly slamming the snooze button this season. For a group with championship aspirations, absolutely nothing has come easy this winter.

If Saturday's loss to the Nets was the wake-up call, it wasn't immediately evident. The Celtics took Sunday off before returning to work Monday and seemed no more panicked about their situation.

While Celtics players and coaches expressed extreme disappointment in the way the team has played in its last six quarters -- falling to New Jersey and crumbling in the second half against the Cleveland Cavaliers before that -- there was no obvious sense of renewed urgency Monday inside the gym at the Sports Authority Training Center at HealthPoint.

But the adage suggests that sometimes a team has to reach rock bottom before it can truly climb. And coach Doc Rivers is confident Saturday's loss might have been just the jolt his team needed.

"We're not used to it happening here, but we're not going to overreact to it," Rivers said of losing to a bottom-tier opponent. "We need work on it. We need to see it. Sometimes you can see it on film, sometimes you can see it on the floor. Sometimes you've got to get your butt whupped a couple times before you realize the problem. I'm hoping all those are going to help us."

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