BOSTON — As Doc Rivers was coaching the Bucks against the Celtics Monday night, he could look up to the TD Garden rafters by the Bucks‘ bench with pride. That 2008 NBA championship banner? He’d helped hang that thing.
But along with the satisfaction, there can also be a measure of wistfulness for Rivers in the skyward gaze. Since he left the Celtics’ sideline in the summer of 2013, there has been a resurgence here that culminated last spring in the club’s 18th title.
Had Rivers stayed, he would likely have his own chapter in franchise lore. He could be well on his way to a spot on one of the retired numbers flags — perhaps with the total of his Boston wins after he retires, or maybe DOC written in descending diagonal order as with the LOSCY for former Celt Jim Loscutoff.
“Yeah, what could have been …” Rivers told Heavy Sports, his voice trailing off. “I thought about it that first year with the Clippers, like, ‘Uh, I may have made a mistake.’ But after that, I didn’t really think about it at all.
“Listen, in my first year with the Clippers I said, ‘Uh-oh, I may have made a mistake.’ But, you know, one thing I’ve never done is I never look back. I just don’t. I’ve never done that.”
Celtics Made a Push in 2013
Well, maybe a little. The Celtics were fairly pleading with Doc to stay in 2013. They were beginning the process of a major reconstruction, trading Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to Brooklyn in a swindle that later yielded the draft picks that in consecutive years became Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Danny Ainge, then the Celtics’ head of basketball ops, wanted Rivers to remain, believing his reputation would be a key to attracting free agents.
The Celts did pretty well in that regard anyway with new coach Brad Stevens, now running the show from the front office. But what would riding out the rebuild have meant to Rivers in the long run? Alas, he found it impossible to turn down the money and roster control with a team seemingly poised to win big in Los Freaking Angeles.
That this came three years after he’d thought about moving on but chose to stay, declaring, “I am a Celtic,” made the uncoupling a little awkward. And as Rivers stood in the Garden’s backstage hallway following the Bucks’ loss to the C’s late Monday night, he acknowledged the departure was not at all easy.
There was the lure of the lore.
“That was the only thing that almost made me stay, was because I kept thinking, Jesus Christ, if I stay, we’re going to get it right back,” Rivers told Heavy. “We knew we were going to rebuild, we were going to get it right. My whole thing is nine years in one place, you start feeling like they’ve heard you. But the players change…
“So I always look back at that and say, ‘Ah, I may have overthought that one.’ But it is what it is. You can’t get it back.”
Clippers Never Lived Up to Billing
And with starry triumvirate of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, Doc and the Clippers could never get past the second round of the playoffs.
“The lesson that you learn,” Rivers said, “is that you can’t play through a bad organization, you know? I left the best organization in basketball at the time to go to the worst organization in basketball, and you can’t outrun that. You can’t beat that. And I realized it early. I said to my coaches, ‘Oh, boy, this is…’
“Now, we got lucky with the Sterling thing,” he said of disgraced former owner Donald Sterling being caught on tape making racist remarks and being banned (his wife stepped in and sold the team to Steve Ballmer before Donald could make it a legal mess).
“And then the thing that I’m proud of is I left the Clippers as one of the best organizations. I was a major part of that. I built that in a lot of ways, so there’s a lot of pride there. I’ll always have pride in that, because that was not a great organization, and now they have a new arena, they have all this, and I was a major part of that. So you never look back; you just look at the things that you’ve done.”
And Rivers has done a lot. In a lot of places. He went from the Clippers to Philadelphia, and after a short stint back in TV last season, he took over the Bucks when Adrian Griffin was let go.
Boston Remains Big for Doc Rivers
Instead of deepening his ties to Boston, a place he still appreciates greatly (the Bucks play Thursday in Memphis, but he kept them here in the interim), Rivers has gathered stamps on his NBA passport. There will thus be quite a few transitional paragraphs when his legacy is written. After playing for four teams, he’s now coached five.
“Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve won,” he said when discussing his bench career in perspective. “S***, I got fired in Philly, and we were .653 (regular season winning percentage, 154-82) in the three years I was there, you know what I mean? So, like, I’m fine with my legacy. I’m eighth in (NBA career) wins, fourth in playoff wins, so I’ve got a great legacy. But I want more. That’s why I’m still doing it.”
This latest location, Milwaukee, fits well. Rivers went to Marquette and is from Chicago, meaning friends and family can connect in person.
“No, no one likes (moving around), but, you know, it doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I always look at it that there’s 30 jobs, and I’ve always had one of the good ones.”
Of the Bucks’ stop, Rivers noted the geography and said, “This has been phenomenal. Now we’ve got to get it right.”
With that, he went to grab his coat and head off for a late dinner in the city he once thought would be his forever basketball home.
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Wistful Ex-Celtics Coach Doc Rivers: ‘I’m Fine With My Legacy’