The Celtics’ Kevin Garnett is restrained by a referee as he tries to get to the Hawks’ Zaza Pachulia in Game Four.

MCT / Mikki Harris

WALTHAM, Mass. — The Celtics didn’t think suspensions were warranted for the second-quarter fracas in Atlanta Monday night, but you never know in the NBA.

So coach Doc Rivers was waiting, and Kendrick Perkins was praying yesterday while league officials reviewed tape of the pushing and shoving that occurred after Kevin Garnett elbowed Zaza Pachulia with 7:24 remaining in the first half.

At the end of the day, literally, the NBA delivered good news. No suspensions. Everybody will be in uniform tonight at TD Banknorth Garden for Game Five of the first-round series, which is tied, 2-2.

The Celtics spent most of the day wondering whether the league would slap suspensions on Garnett for instigating the incident with an elbow Pachulia’s chest and for contact with a referee and on Perkins and Atlanta’s Marvin Williams for leaving the bench, although neither strayed far from the comfort of those folding chairs.

“If it happens, it happens, and we’ll deal with it. I would like to get an answer sooner than later. They have the same information as we had. You look at it, and you make a decision,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said late yesterday afternoon after he had spent an hour or so with his team reviewing tape of their 97-92 loss to the Hawks in Game Four.

Garnett, Pachulia, Sam Cassell and Joe Johnson of the Hawks received technical fouls. Yesterday, Garnett seemed surprised when asked if he expected to be punished.

“No, the referee grabbed me. I don’t expect to get suspended,” he said.

Perkins was unaware at the time that he had crossed the line.

“I didn’t realize it until I watched on tape (Monday) night,” he said. “If it happens, it happens. Right now I’m saying my prayers that I’m not suspended. If I did wrong, then I did wrong and I got to accept the consequences.”

Danny Ainge, Boston’s executive director of basketball operations, was on the phone with the NBA office yesterday morning.

“They don’t want to hear from coaches,” Rivers said. “I let Danny call so they can yell at him.”

Rivers played in the NBA and understands how emotions run high in the playoffs and that shoving incidents sometimes result. He tries to impart a message of calm to his players but knows how difficult it can be to practice.

“You can show film of fights and how to react and how not to react. The game’s emotional, and I think for everyone outside the game it’s so easy to say, ‘Well, just step away.’ Well, you’re not playing, and you probably never played, and it’s very difficult in that situation,” he said. “I think I’m excitable, but I’ve got a decent calm. I’ve been in three or four of them myself as a player, and right afterwards I felt like a dunce, but at that time there was nothing in me that didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Rivers is less likely to overlook a player’s stepping on the floor during an altercation, an automatic suspension.

“We talk about that before we run out every single game that you can’t afford to step out, look out. When you look at it, neither team was trying to get in it. They were just trying to look, and sometimes you don’t look down. But that’s the rules and so you have to live up to those rules,” he said.

“It’s an emotional game,” Rivers added. “It should be, but we have to be able to function through the emotion.”

Scott named coach of year

Bryon Scott of New Orleans received the coach-of-the-year award yesterday, and Rivers, who finished second despite leading the Celtics to the best record in the NBA, had no problem with the results.

“I think he should have won,” said Rivers, who voted for Jerry Sloan of Utah, as he has every year he has coached. Sloan has yet to win.

“I do think Byron absolutely deserved it, and Rick Adelman, I thought, should have been second,” Rivers said.

Scott received 70 first-place votes, Rivers 23 and Adelman, of the Houston Rockets, 17.

The coach of the year award is named for Red Auerbach, so there is a touch of irony in this year’s recipient. Scott won three NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston’s archrival in the NBA Finals in the 1960s and 1980s.