Is Doc Rivers Overrated?
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A week after the Philadelphia 76erswere eliminated from the playoffs, it is still shocking that the Atlanta Hawks are now in the Eastern Conference Finals. For a team with championship aspirations, when the playoffs began, the Sixers looked like a guarantee to make it to the Eastern Conference Finals, at the very least. Especially given the fact that they would avoid both Milwaukee and Brooklyn until the Third Round. While there were other factors in the series, everyone looks back on the coach.
This leads us to Doc Rivers, coach of the team that was bounced too early in the playoffs yet again. Doc Rivers has been a guy around the league who for years has been called one of the best coaches in the game.
However, it feels like every year in the playoffs he’s always blowing some lead. From his early days with Orlando blowing a 3-1 lead, to just last year when he became the first coach ever to blow a 3-1 lead three separate times in the postseason.
Some years Doc has had to deal with injuries to his star players, but for the most part in the postseason, his teams fall apart and make huge mistakes when they matter the most.
Any other coach with his poor history in the playoffs would probably be out of a job by now. However, the one saving grace on his resume is the fact that he was the coach of the historic Boston Celtics team that won the NBA Championship in 2008. Even that playoff run was a struggle for Rivers’ team, as despite having arguably the best roster in the Eastern Conference, if not all of basketball, they still faced an uphill battle to win it all.
Then the following year, Kevin Garnett got injured, but they still had a 3-2 lead in Game Six against Orlando in the Second Round. Despite having a double-digit lead at one point, the defending NBA Champs ended up losing Game Six to force a win-or-go-home situation. A game in which they lost at home after being blown out.
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The worst part about these losses is that there’s usually something that makes the blown games/leads more memorable than they already would be. For example in 2014 the Los Angeles Clippers lost Game Five of their Conference semifinal-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder to go down 3-2. That’s not a big deal, but the Clippers blew the game after having a seven-point lead with just 49 seconds left in the game. Down the stretch, Chris Paul had a huge hand in blowing it. He committed two turnovers and fouled Russell Westbrook to put him on the line for the game-winning free throws. That collapse was bad enough alone but then the following game, the Clippers blew a 16 point lead at home down 3-2.
The following year when the Clippers blew the 3-1 lead to Houston in Game Six, the Clippers had a 19 point lead going into the fourth quarter. With James Harden on the bench, the Rockets managed to pull off a shocking comeback to force Game Seven.
Stories like this can be consistently found throughout Doc Rivers’ coaching career, yet he still seems to be viewed as one of the better coaches in the NBA despite this. After yet another blown opportunity in the playoffs with yet another franchise, people might have to start wondering why Doc still has a job despite the consistent blunders.
