![]() All three of those incumbents oversaw successful seasons and playoff appearances, but each team improved under a first-time NBA head coach and won a title after the change. For years, that’s been the talking point with Rivers: he makes mistakes, but he brings a lot of good things to the table as well, and who would you replace him with? But that argument has grown tired as the league watched the Golden State Warriors fire Mark Jackson and become one of the league’s greatest dynasties under Steve Kerr, followed by the Cleveland Cavaliers firing David Blatt and winning a title under Ty Lue and then the Toronto Raptors firing Dwane Casey and winning a title under Nick Nurse. The tricky part about firing a head coach is finding a replacement who is better than him. It’s been a massive summer for the NBA’s coaching carousel, and Rivers is just the latest in a slew of playoff coaches–including Oklahoma City’s Billy Donovan (who has since signed with Chicago), Houston’s Mike D’Antoni, Indiana’s Nate McMillan, and Philadelphia’s Brett Brown–to be on the market. The first instance was in 2015 against the Houston Rockets, and the latter came just two weeks ago, as the heavily-favored Clippers blew three straight double-digit leads in games 5, 6, and 7 to lose to the Denver Nuggets, who were then promptly dispatched in 5 games in the Western Conference Finals by the Los Angeles Lakers.Īgainst Denver, Rivers’ coaching was the team’s clearest weakness: they had no coherent gameplan defensively and no cohesion on offense, utilized horrific lineup rotations that the Nuggets gleefully exploited, and lacked the leadership and poise to win games in the face of runs from their opponents–the opposite of what the LA Lakers and Miami Heat did in closeout games en route to being the NBA’s two finalists. #DOC RIVERS TEAMS COACHED SERIES#However, it was what happened in the playoffs that gave Rivers a well-deserved bad reputation: despite having enormously talented teams, Rivers only won three playoff series in seven years and, in historically embarrassing fashion, infamously blew not one but two 3-1 leads in the second round to prevent the franchise from advancing to their first-ever Conference Finals appearance. Rivers oversaw the best seven-year stretch in team history, going 356-208 (.631) in 564 regular season games and making the playoffs six out of seven years. UehImTaSnw- doc rivers September 28, 2020 ![]()
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