Before Wednesday night’s Celtics-Grizzlies game, autographed boxing gloves from Manny Pacquiao adorned the Celtics’ lockers. They were a gift from the world-renowned boxer, whom many players on the team met following their championship in 2008.

The C’s insisted the gloves had no deeper meaning than a sign of appreciation.

“There’s no message, no message,” Doc Rivers said before his team took on the Grizzlies.

“I don’t know. What is it, beat somebody? I don’t know.” Kendrick Perkins guessed.

By the end of the game, the gifts symbolized more irony than inspiration. It was the Celtics, not the Grizzlies, who got knocked out, 111-91 (click here for the full recap).

The Celtics set a pair of season marks that they would rather not remember — fewest points in a first quarter (12) and fewest points in a half (33). On the other end, they allowed the Grizzlies to shoot 56.3 percent from 3-point range, a drastic change for the visiting team, which entered the game ranked 26th in the league at less than 34 percent.

But the problems weren’t just from behind the arc. Boston was outrebounded 48-29, and its starters were outrebounded 36-19.

Here are three things we learned from the loss:

‘WE WERE AWFUL TONIGHT’

Forty-six minutes of basketball had gone by before Rivers saw any type of silver lining in the game.

“If you guys are looking for if there was any good message in this game, there was one: Two minutes left in the game,” he said. “When they announced that, that was the only good message in this entire game. We were awful tonight, energy was awful.”

The Grizzlies set the tone for the game halfway through the first quarter. They went on a 7-0 to push their lead up to 11-4 and never looked back. By the end of the quarter, the Celtics were down by 15.

“I thought, honestly, we started out, we wanted to play,” said Rivers. “I thought the first seven or eight minutes, I thought we played with great energy. Couldn’t make a shot. I think I talked about this a couple games ago — because we couldn’t make shots, you could see us not running back on defense, getting down. And that’s the one disappointing thing about tonight and the other games, is right now our offense — our lack of offense — is dictating how we play defense. And that’s disappointing.”

Paul Pierce agreed.

“We claim ourselves to be a defensive team first,” he said. “I think at times, we let our offense dictate what our defense does. Coach says it, when we miss shot after shot, we put our heads down and it’s affecting us on the end of the court. And it can’t be that way.”

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OWING IT TO THE FANS

Ray Allen wasn’t happy. He tapped his fingers against the side of his locker as he answered questions about the Celtics 12th home loss of the season.

“It pisses me off,” he said matter-of-factly. “I want to do the best thing, the best job that I know how for anybody that comes to watch. It’s a lot of people’s first time in the building, so performance-wise you want to do everything you can to show people enjoyment. That’s what we start the game off every game, trying to, not put on a show, but just do our jobs.”

The Celtics have already doubled the number of losses at the Garden from the previous season. And the fans are well aware — the boos were audible at several points throughout the game.

The C’s understand the significance of the support from their fans. While Pierce was surprised by the reaction, he knows the team has to give a better performance every game.

“Yeah, it surprises me,” Pierce said of their struggles at home. “You come out on your home court and get this kind of loss and get booed by your home court. I haven’t been on a court where we’ve been booed. It’s been a couple times this year. It’s been about five or six years since I’ve seen that. We’re still 17 games over .500. All the fans want is constant effort night in and night out. I think we’ve got to be more consistent with that regardless of if we win or lose.”

‘WE’LL GET OUT OF THIS’

There are 19 games left in the regular season. Nineteen opportunities to play four quarters of basketball. Nineteen chances to get back to Celtics basketball.

Not only does Boston want to capitalize on their remaining games, it has to. They are now four games behind the Magic for the second spot in the East and tied for wins with the Hawks.

The schedule doesn’t let up, either. They still have two games left against the Cavaliers, two against the Bucks (who just beat them on Tuesday), a road trip with stops in Dallas, Houston and Utah, and a stretch of home games that include the Nuggets, Spurs, Rockets and Thunder.

The Celtics are ready for ready for battle.

“This is a team thing, it’s a team effort, but obviously the leads are going to lead this, and we’ll get out of this,” Garnett said. “We’re a grit kind of team. We’re a working team. We never said it was going to be easy. We never said it was going to be perfect, and it’s not going to look good at times. This sure in hell is an example of that.

“But we’ll get better. We have no choice.”