Ex-Celtics Coach Doc Rivers Opens Up on Glen Davis: ‘Fluctuations Were Nuts’

Getty Glen Davis, Doc Rivers

From 2007 to 2011, Doc Rivers coached Glen Davis on the Boston Celtics, where they won a title together. Despite Davis’ contributions during that time, Rivers believed he could have achieved more had he kept his weight in check.

“I thought Glen Davis had unbelievable feel. He was skilled. He had a very high basketball IQ, but boy, we struggled every year,” Rivers said on the December 12 episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast. “It was just he ate a lot of food. He ate the team meals, and then he would go off and eat more meals. But there were times where he would do it right and go in stretches. His weight fluctuated through the year. Each year, I’m gonna guess between 10 and 30 pounds. The weight fluctuations were nuts.”

Rivers then used one particular training camp to illustrate Davis’ problems maintaining his weight in Boston.

“Usually a typical training camp, I would say a guy loses between five and ten pounds. I think it was the fourth or fifth day, (ex-Celtics trainer Bryan Doo) wants to meet with me because Baby had gained six, and he couldn’t figure it out. He’s like, ‘It’s impossible Doc. We’re going two-a-days, we’re going hard. This is impossible.'”

After their time in Boston was done, Rivers and Davis reunited with the Los Angeles Clippers from 2013 to 2015. They did not achieve nearly the same success together that they did in Boston.

Doc Rivers Regrets Leaving the Celtics

Doc Rivers left the then-rebuilding Celtics to coach the contending Clippers in 2013. Though the Clippers went on some playoff runs during his time there, Rivers told NESN’s Tim Crowley that he wishes he had stayed in Boston.

“I regret it every day,” Rivers told Crowley in a December 5 story. “It was the right move for me at the time. Nine years at one place. We were going to rebuild. I look back on that all the time. My life would have been so much smoother if I had stayed where I was at. … You don’t look back, and I don’t, but I regret that at times, for sure.”

Rivers continued by detailing why he looks back so fondly on those memories.

“They were probably the best years of my life in sports,” Rivers said. “Being here that entire time. … That time will never go away, for me and a lot of people involved in that. When you walk the streets of Boston, you see all of your ex-players. (Kevin Garnett) and all these guys. You still reminisce about it. It’s an amazing feeling that will never go away.”

Rivers coached some good teams after his time in Boston but never achieved the same level of success elsewhere as a coach.

Glen Davis Convicted of Fraud: Report

NBC’s Tom Winter reported on Wednesday, November 15, that Glen Davis and another Celtics alum, Will Bynum, had been found guilty of committing fraud.

“A jury has convicted former NBA players Glen Davis and William Bynum after they were charged with engaging in a criminal scheme to defraud the NBA Players’ Health and Benefit Welfare plan,” Winter wrote via his X account. “U.S. Attorney Damien Williams says the pair’s fraud netted them over $5 million.”

Davis “was convicted on four counts including wire fraud, health care fraud, conspiring to commit fraud, and conspiring to make false statements,” according to Reuters.

Davis has yet to be sentenced since being convicted.