Rivers willing to take heat for shot at title
PHILADELPHIA — He’s chasing that high again, the one that arrived in 2008, when Paul Pierce tossed a bucket of orange Gatorade on his back and he got to inhale the cigar smoke and champagnesoaked odor of a championship locker room. Doc Rivers hasn’t had that feeling in nearly 16 years, but he wants it again, even if it means more secondguessing and social media roasting should his pursuit continue to come up short.
Calling games for ESPN alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke, or swinging golf clubs with comedian Larry David, were enough to pass the time for what felt like the next phase of life for the 62-year-old Rivers. But then last month he received an unexpected call from the Milwaukee Bucks to coach another team with championship aspirations, another roster with future Hall of Fame players. The scrutiny, the stressors, the pressure, they’re all worth it for the chance to experience that high.
“I love what I do. I love coaching. I love this job. I love this,” Rivers said. “I’ve been lucky enough to keep putting myself in positions to try. I wouldn’t have taken this job if there wasn’t an opportunity, knowing that, all the pressure would come with that, you jump right back in because it’s why you do it.”
Rivers is with his third team since reaching the pinnacle with the Boston Celtics in his ninth season as a head coach. But his desire to be an NBA champion extended back to a 14year playing career with the Atlanta Hawks, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs in which his team was never the last one standing.
It’s been 14 years since his last Finals appearance, a dozen since his last conference finals appearance, and an eternity of jokes about blown 3-1 series leads, regrettable mistakes and misfortune. Rivers has managed to hold on to his hairline, but his reputation has taken a hit. His previous teams in Philadelphia and with the Los Angeles Clippers met an impenetrable secondround ceiling. He admits: “Some was under my control. Some was out of my control.”
The boos Rivers heard in his return to Philadelphia on Sunday were an answer for whom 76ers fans wanted to blame for an era in which Joel Embiid ascended to most valuable player and two runner-up finishes for the honor but also witnessed the end of the Embiid-Ben Simmons partnership and two seven-game series losses in which Philadelphia blew opportunities to win at home to advance to the conference finals. One heckler was not impressed by the Bucks’ 11998 blowout of the Embiidless 76ers, shouting incessantly, “We know you, Doc!” Another made him laugh.
“One guy told me that Larry David is looking for me to golf, so I thought that was pretty funny,” Rivers said with a laugh.
His three seasons in Philadelphia marked the shortest stint of Rivers’ coaching career, evidence of the lack of patience that came with him being hired to close and failing to deliver.
Rivers guided Hall of Famers Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to a championship but has also excelled in getting unheralded groups to overachieve. He won his only coach of the year award in his first season on the bench, leading a scrapping group in Orlando to 41 wins in 1999-2000. His 2018-19 Clippers, with no all-stars on the roster, won two playoff games against the healthy, Kevin Durantinfused Golden State Warriors. The 76ers got walloped in Game 7 against Boston last season, but Rivers asked a room full of reporters Sunday how many picked them to win that series and not a hand went up.
“I believe in what I do,” Rivers said. “You don’t get credit for getting guys to big games and coaching through it. But I don’t worry about it.”
Rivers’ firing last May had the appearance of an extended, or perhaps permanent, pause for a coaching career that finds him eighth all-time in wins, second among active coaches to San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich. But the Bucks lured him back on Jan. 26, once general manager Jon Horst determined the franchise wasn’t going to win a championship with rookie coach Adrian Griffin, no matter what the team’s 30-13 record might have suggested at the time.
Tyronn Lue was the last midseason coaching replacement to take a team to a title, in 2016 with LeBron James’ “this is for you” Cleveland Cavaliers. Only three coaches have won a championship while hopping on a moving train — the others before Lue were Paul Westhead in 1980 and Pat Riley in 1982 and 2006 — but Rivers is attempting to become the first hired from outside the organization (though he did serve as an informal adviser to Griffin).
Over All-Star weekend, Rivers discussed the difficulty of taking over a team without the benefit of a training camp, or any of the other summer rituals coaches use to build relationships to endure the challenges of the regular season. While some, including his former player and ESPN colleague JJ Redick, dismissed the explanation as a ready-made excuse for failing, All-Star guard Damian Lillard said he believes the Bucks are only focused on how this change will work.
“It’s not like we had to come in and just change everything or teach people how to play. He’s a voice. He’s a leader of men. He demands a lot of us,” Lillard said. “When you start looking for excuses and reasons why, you’re done already and I don’t think nobody’s done that.”
The first 10 games were uglier than expected, with Rivers’ Bucks going 3-7, including blowout losses to Minnesota and Miami, and embarrassing defeats against lowly Portland and shorthanded Memphis. Milwaukee had won its first two games since the All-Star break going into Tuesday’s games, convincing Rivers and his team that they’re making progress with only 24 games remaining before the postseason in which they will truly be measured.
Rivers is back in the city where he starred in college at Marquette, in an arena where his No. 31 jersey hangs in the rafters. But he hasn’t been afforded much of an opportunity to bask in the nostalgia of the homecoming, with the urgency of his mission taking precedence. To expedite the connection with his team, Rivers has brought in his former players Pat Beverley and Danilo Gallinari and focused on dinners with others, such as franchise centerpiece Giannis Antetokounmpo, whom he was previously unfamiliar.
“I love him,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s been incredible playing for him. He just explains to me what he wants from me. You respect him because he’s been 25 years in the league. The transition has been very, very hard. This is my fourth coach in [nine] months . ... But I love how the things are going so far.”
The Bucks aren’t asking Rivers to do any more than what their roster, and past success, suggests they should. The franchise has been moving in reverse since winning the 2021 NBA title, with last year’s first-round upset loss to eighth-seeded Miami leading to a cute sound bite from Antetokounmpo about how the team didn’t fail but was taking “steps to success.”
Nearly every major move since — firing Mike Budenholzer, trading Jrue Holiday for Lillard, firing Griffin and now hiring Rivers — has been a desperate response to frustration over those “steps.” They need Rivers but he also needs them, because while he has taken those lumps and can work a room well enough to suggest he is unbothered by the criticism, he is driven by it.
“I love winning, and I want to win,” Rivers said. “I just think the longer you are in this and the more chances you have, that’s a good thing. Whether you come up or not, you just got to keep pounding away at it.”