Doc Rivers has coached 20 teams to the NBA playoffs, has won more postseason games than he has lost, has won a Coach of the Year award (2000), has a championship ring from the 2008 Boston Celtics, is about to pass Phil Jackson for seventh on the all-time coaching wins list, and was named among the 15 greatest coaches in NBA history by the league.
However, ask most fans about Rivers as a coach and the first thing that comes up is the three blown 3-1 leads in playoff series — he is the only coach in league history to blow multiple 3-1 leads in the postseason.
Rivers pushed back against that narrative, speaking to Andscape’s Marc J. Spears.
“It is what it is. It’s part of my legacy. There’s nothing I can do about it. I got a team that was an eight seed up 3-1. That is coaching. That is not bad coaching. The one with the Clippers is the only one that got away. But people don’t realize that Chris Paul was running on one leg [in 2015 with the Clippers] and we were also the underdog in that series. When you think about it, Houston had home court, not us.
“No one tells a real story. And I’m fine with that. It’s unfair in some ways. I don’t get enough credit for getting the three wins. I get credit for losing. I always say, ‘What if we had lost to Houston in six?’ No one cares. One of the things that I’m proud of is we’ve never been swept. All the coaches have been swept in the playoffs. My teams achieve. A lot of them overachieve and I’m very proud of that.”
Maybe the most famous of those blown leads was in the bubble in 2020, when Rivers coached a title contender in the Clippers who were up 3-1 on the Nuggets and lost.
“No, in the bubble, I had a group of guys that didn’t want to be there. [Ex-Clippers guard] Lou Williams said [on a podcast in 2023], ‘Look, we were trying to leave. We made the decision that we didn’t want to be there.’ So, I felt that… And what bugs me about the bubble is I couldn’t get them to understand that we had a chance to win [a title]. That’s what bugs me. They wanted to go home more than they wanted to win. And I still don’t understand that.”
Rivers isn’t totally wrong — his teams are making the playoffs and often with good seeds. The first of those blown leads was in 2003 when he coached an eight-seed Orlando team against top-seeded Detroit, getting that team up 3-1 was impressive. The 2020 blown lead against Denver, on a Clippers team with two-time Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, will always be the one that got away.
Rivers is a quality NBA coach, without question. Whether he gets the most out of his team and knows how to motivate them in the playoffs is a legitimate question, but he will get another chance to prove himself this season with a Bucks team with high expectations but maybe not the roster to live up to them. Can he get this team to overachieve?
And hold on to leads?
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