Doc Rivers may be one of the winningest head coaches in the history of the NBA, but he doesn't command as much respect from fans as he used to. Rivers, who is now with the Milwaukee Bucks, has seen his reputation grow worse and worse with each passing season, as fans view him as the head coach of multiple teams that have blown a 3-1 lead in the playoffs — most recently in 2020, when his Los Angeles Clippers, despite being heavily favored to win their second-round matchup against the Denver Nuggets, inexplicably lost the plot and exited the playoffs early.
Rivers, however, feels as though he is being hard done by this reputation he has gotten. The Bucks head coach believes that fans simply prefer to run away with their narratives without taking into consideration the entirety of the story.
“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,” Rivers told Marc J. Spears of Andscape.
“No one tells a real story. And I’m fine with that. It’s unfair in some ways.”
Nonetheless, the Clippers' meltdown in 2015 remains one of the most inexplicable in the history of the NBA. The Clippers, up 3-2 in the series, held a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter against the Houston Rockets and appeared to be on their way to the franchise's first Conference Finals appearance. But everyone lost the plot, including Rivers, and his reputation hasn't been the same since.
Make no mistake about it, Rivers is a good coach; he wouldn't have been able to win over 1,000 games in his career if he wasn't. But the Bucks head coach will simply have to live with this reputation of his, as painful as it may be for him to relive the memories that fans won't ever let him forget.
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Clippers guard Chris Paul (3) talks with Clippers head coach Doc Rivers
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Doc Rivers appears to be at his best as a head coach when he is tasked to elevate an undermanned/undertalented team. He hangs his hat on this; in 2003, he had the eight-seeded Orlando Magic led by Tracy McGrady up 3-1 against the one-seed Detroit Pistons, only to flounder in the end. In 2019, the Clippers took two games off a fully healthy Golden State Warriors squad, with Rivers getting the most out of a roster that didn't have an All-Star player.
It's when Rivers is tasked to helm a team with lofty expectations that they find a way to underperform. Nonetheless, there is value in getting as much as possible out of a roster, and the Bucks head coach definitely has a history of doing so.
“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,” Rivers added.