I’m not sure there is a coach/manager in American professional sports where there is a bigger deviation between how insiders (media/teams/organizations) perceive them and they way outsiders (fans/people on the internet, basically) perceive them than Doc Rivers.
The genesis comes from April 11th, 2024. On this date, the NBA named Rivers as one of the fifteen greatest coaches in the history of the league, an honor bestowed as part of the Association’s 75th anniversary. To his credit, Rivers’s credentials include being at the helm of the 2007-2008 World Champion Boston Celtics and being decorated as Coach of the Year during his tenure with the Orlando Magic. Rivers also led what had been an incredibly dreary Los Angeles Clippers organization out of the doldrums of ineptitude and into a place of respectability that they still hold today.
Even more, Rivers is the winningest coach in Clippers history and 6th in wins All-Time as a head coach. He has seen success not just with the three teams mentioned but also the Philadelphia 76ers, leading to a fairly uncommon occurrence in the NBA of having run winning teams in 4 different cities over the course of an NBA career. The fact he has received five different opportunities to coach over the course of a 27-year coaching career is an endorsement in itself. Organizations have given him opportunities to succeed, and while you would hope for more than perhaps one ring over those 27 seasons, a lot of good coaches never even get as far as he has. There is a a reason teams continue to turn to him.
However, almost exactly two years to the date after being named as one of the NBA’s 15 Greatest Coaches, Rivers was let go by the Milwaukee Bucks. His dismissal came after a train-wreck of a season that saw his latest team end with a 32-50 record, finishing in the lottery and below .500 for the first time in a decade. The results speak for themselves. Milwaukee is five years removed from winning the NBA Finals. They have one of the most talented and coveted players in the sport (for now) in Giannis Antetokounmpo. Rivers’s predecessor staked the Bucks to a 30-13 start before Rivers was brought in part way through the campaign during the ’23-’24 season. Still, they never got past the first round of the playoffs in the three seasons that Doc was in charge, including their full-fledged flop this season. It is no wonder he was immediately fired the same night after the Bucks closed their season with a loss to the 76ers.
Additionally, Rivers’s critics poke holes in his accomplishments. For instance, the Finals he won in 2008 came on the backs of the “Big Three” of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, three talented veteran All-Stars that led their roster. Boston’s was the first “Big Three” of the modern era, predating the Miami Heatles and other teams that followed in their image. To some, Rivers was able to take advantage of a souped up roster when no other team or coach yet had the same advantage. Rivers was piloting a jet engine at a time when everyone else was still flying propellers.
Additionally, he may have been Coach of the Year for the 1999-2000 season, his first time leading a team, but that following summer Rivers may have cost Orlando the opportunity to improve to a stratosphere they have never reached. Rumor has it that Tim Duncan, a modern day Hall of Famer and often considered the best power forward of all-time, was heavily considering leaving the San Antonio Spurs in the summer of 2000 to join the Magic. According to Grant Hill (who ended up himself signing with Orlando that summer, more to come on that), Duncan was interested in joining Orlando until he heard through the grapevine that Rivers had a policy against spouses flying on the team plane during road trips.
That one simple rule imposed by Rivers could have changed the course of NBA history. Duncan and the Spurs would go on to win four more championships together over an illustrious 19-year career that would see him become the greatest Spur of all-time. Rivers’s teams in Orlando would be good but not great. He would make the playoffs in the next three seasons including making the second round once before bottoming out and being fired after a 1-10 start in the 2003-2004 season. (Orlando would use the misfortune to fire Rivers and later draft Dwight Howard, who would get them to a Finals and some of the best basketball in their history.) Rivers would then move on to his aforementioned tenure in Boston.
Critics also like to mention that while the Clippers and 76ers would see six 50-win seasons and make the playoffs in nine out of ten seasons with Rivers at the helm, neither team would ever make a Conference Finals. In fact, the Clippers wouldn’t make their first ever Conference Finals in franchise history until Rivers was replaced by Tryonn Lue for the 2020-2021 campaign. This is despite coaching some of the most talented players of the era. Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, James Harden and Joel Embiid- all All-Stars and two different league Most Valuable Players (and a Finals MVP on a different team)- played for Rivers. Often, two of the players listed were on the roster at the same time, meaning he had a bevy of talent in both LA and Philly.
All of this combines to make critics scoff at the idea of Rivers being anything resembling a good coach. To summarize, early in his career he actively hurt an improving team’s chances to add one of the most talented players of his era. He then was carried by superior talent in Boston. He couldn’t elevate similarly high-talented teams he had in Los Angeles and Philadelphia when the other teams he was competing with had improved in caliber. Then there is the crowning argument of what an abject failure his time in Milwaukee was.
Personally, like most things, I feel like the truth is in the middle. To be clear, I do think that the idea of Rivers being one of the fifteen greatest coaches in the history of the NBA is an overestimation of his talent and resume. At the same time, I think the discourse online in reaction to the praise he has received has been a drastic overreaction. People online can’t seem to stand when they perceive someone getting more praise than they feel is deserved. New age pejoratives like “glazing” start getting thrown around. People overreact. But rather than overreact in turn to their overreaction, allow me to just elaborate.
We don’t know for sure if Rivers really hampered Orlando’s ability to land Duncan. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. We will never get inside Duncan’s mind to know for sure if he was seriously considering leaving San Antonio. What we do know is that Rivers piloted a ’99-’00 Magic team that came into the season having traded 4 of its starters and starting a rebuilding project. Their best players were completely adequate but never a star point guard Darrell Armstrong and Ben Wallace before he really became Ben Wallace. He landed this squad with a 41-41 record. To me, that was a good coaching job deserving of recognition.
While the Magic didn’t land Duncan that following summer, they did land two stars in guard Tracy McGrady and forward Grant Hill. As stated, Orlando would proceed to make the playoffs in the next three seasons, making the second round once. Criticism can be lobbed on Rivers for not getting the Magic further than the second round of the playoffs in the next three years. But, I would suggest that the problem Orlando had in the following years was not really Rivers as much as it was the fact that while Hill was an exceptional talent, he could never stay on the floor.
In the four seasons where Hill was on the Magic and Rivers was their coach, Hill only played in just 14% of their regular seasons games. That’s one out of every seven! That includes a season where Hill only played 4 games and another that he missed entirely. Hill was a star player given a 7-year, max contract at the time. His lack of availability was a significant detriment. Without Hill, I don’t see Orlando being bounced in the first or second round of the playoffs as an underachievement.
Moving to his time in Boston, we have always known that Garnett is an intense character. Due to his media career, we now know that Pierce is more of an eccentric character than we may have realized when he was playing (or at least that’s my perspective). The Celtics’ point guard for those teams was Rajon Rondo, who was an incredibly smart and versatile player, but also heavily opinionated and easy to ruffle feathers. I still think that a different coach with less talent at managing personalities probably gets less out of that roster, even with their abundance of talent. I’m not going to begrudge someone for winning a ring and making a second Finals. Teams that were just as talented have fallen short before (’04 Lakers, ’11 Heat as examples- both also coached by coaches in the NBA’s 15 Greatest, by the way).
However, I do agree with the idea the Rivers isn’t an especially schematically good coach. On those Boston teams, assistant coach Tom Thibodeau is credited with being the defensive mastermind. Lue also worked under Rivers in Boston and Los Angeles (twice). I find it interesting that if Rivers were an NFL coach, having a lineage that included one of the best defensive coaches in recent memory and another coach assist under him that would go on to win a championship as a head coach would work in his favor. They would be considered part of his “coaching tree”. Instead, some NBA fans want to use his past underlings success to discredit him. Still, I think Rivers probably started out being better at strategy in his Orlando and Boston days but as he has gotten older the game has passed him by a little.
Rivers’s time with the Clippers is likely his second best work as a coach. Los Angeles may not have made a Conference Finals under Doc, but he handled the toxic environment that owner Donald Sterling both created and left in his wake exceptionally well. The Clippers were just shaking off the label as a laughing stock of an organization (a healthy part of which was also from Sterling’s idiocy) when Rivers replaced Vinny del Negro. The organization and team could have shattered from the drama, embarrassment and in reaction to the foul and ignorant comments of their own governor.
Rivers’s greatest strength on the bench and in the locker room though has been his ability to manage personalities. He was the right man for a Clippers team in a very tumultuous time. Most of the credit should go to the players for persevering, but you could say that Rivers was important to their series win against what would become a developing dynasty in the Golden State Warriors all while the Sterling controversy was unfolding.
As for his inability to get back to the Finals since his time in Boston, a lot of the stars that Rivers has coached- Paul, Harden and Embiid immediately come to mind- have reputations for not succeeding in the playoffs in their careers with or without Rivers. Paul played for seven different teams in his career (and even more coaches) and never won a Finals. Harden has been on six teams. No ring. Embiid has had several coaches in Philadelphia and never won. It doesn’t seem like a Doc Rivers problem if these stars weren’t able to get it done without him in the coach’s office either.
Lastly, while Rivers didn’t help matters in Milwaukee, the situation there had been devolving for some time even before his entry into the situation. I think he got swept up in the collapse more than he caused it. After winning the Finals in 2021, the Bucks were just never able to get to the same level of prominence, while feeling the pressure of not wasting Giannis’s prime years. Antentokounmpo having his running mate in forward Khris Middleton often in and out of the lineup with injuries certainly worsened their chances. Running into a scorching hot Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat in 2023 did as well.
With the pressure mounting, Milwaukee traded for All-Star point guard Damian Lillard during the off-season before the 2023-2024 campaign to try to bolster their championship chances and show Giannis they were doing whatever was necessary to stay competitive. They also fired their championship-winning coach in Mike Budenholzer and hired Adrian Griffin, the architect of an impressive defense in Toronto the season before. Griffin’s time with the Bucks was odd, to say the least. Defensive-minded point guard Jrue Holiday was planned to star in the defensive attack that Griffin ran so well in Toronto, but he was moved out of town in the Lillard trade. Lillard has been a great player in his time, one of the best scorers and creators of his era, but was not the defensive bulldog that Holiday was. Still, the Bucks went 30-13 under Griffin’s direction. But, accounts are that he seemed unqualified for the job and that the team was succeeding in spite of him. The Lillard trade causing a change from who he had planned to strategize around likely also got him off on the wrong foot. He had already “lost the locker room” in just half of a season. Despite the won-loss success, Griffin was dismissed and Rivers entered shortly thereafter.
So, with pressure looming and what seems to be a roster that was growing in disgruntlement, Rivers was put in a tough position to begin with. To be fair, this sounds like exactly the type of project that Rivers would be perfect for- trying to galvanize a talented team that was having issues more on the personal side than with Xs and Os. Unfortunately, we never got to see what a combination of Giannis and Lillard would be able to put together in the playoffs as Lillard was injured in the team’s first round match-up with Indiana.
Lillard would lose all of the 2024-2025 regular season as well to deep vein thrombosis and would try to return for the playoffs but ended up tearing his Achilles in Game 4 of the first round. This would bring an end to the Lilliard experiment in Milwaukee after just two seasons and really put the Bucks behind the 8-ball in terms of talent to supplement around Antentokounmpo. From Rivers’s perspective, it is probably most similar to his time with the Magic. He never had the full compliment of talent.
That isn’t to say that Rivers is a perfect coach. Like previously stated, I do think the game has passed him by some. Only getting 32 wins out of a team with Giannis on it is troubling, even with Ryan Rollins as their second best player.
The drama around Giannis’s future has also reached a fever pitch and neither side can seem to get their story straight on whether he is staying or being traded. It has been a mess. A mess bigger than Doc Rivers’s coaching. Panic move after panic move in terms of firing Budenholzer, trading for Lillard and firing Griffin has gotten them here. Doc just wasn’t able to be the person that helped them overcome and turn it around.
So yeah, the last enduring memory of Doc Rivers as a coach is going to be a really underwhelming season at the helm of the Bucks (unless he can now talk a 6th team into bringing him in). That is part of his resume. He didn’t get it done with a number of stars. That is also part of his resume. But so is a Finals trophy that I believe he earned through her ability to manage personalities in Boston. So is some strong work overcoming poor rosters and injuries in Orlando. So is having a winning record in 21 of 27 seasons as a coach.
But is that enough to name him one of the fifteen best coaches in the history of the NBA? He doesn’t have the innovations of a Red Auberach or Don Nelson, the rings of Phil Jackson or Steve Kerr or the stability of Gregg Popovich.
The answer is a definite “No.” But him getting the honor doesn’t make him a bad coach worthy of ridicule. The fact is Doc Rivers is a Hall of Very Good coach. Nothing more and nothing less.
Pick-Up Sports Talk: Cleveland 