Getty Glen Davis #11 and head coach Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics.
Glen “Big Baby” Davis has a lot of memories of playing for the Boston Celtics. He won a championship with the team his rookie year, then became a valued rotation player in all of their playoff runs following their 17th championship. One of those memories is losing to Boston’s storied rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, in seven games. In a recent interview with VladTV, Davis believes the main culprit in losing that series was then-Celtics Head Coach Doc Rivers.
“That was Doc’s fault. I blame that on Doc,” Davis said. “Doc has a mentality of rolling with his veterans. The guys that he feels like got him there, but when you go back to 2010, Game 4, right. That was my big breakout game… That game, we had to find energy from something else. It’s the same thing for Game 7, Doc. We’ve got to find the energy from somewhere else in Game 7. So, Rasheed Wallace playing all these minutes. (Kevin Garnett) playing all these minutes. You’ve got to let us give them some break. There was a period in the second half he didn’t sub.”
Davis understands why Rivers went with his veterans at that time but believes Rivers should have made adjustments like playing Davis himself more because of what he brought to the table.
“I get it. You want your veterans to help you. You rely on your veterans. You rely on the guys that got you there, but as a coach, you have to adjust, and that’s the greatest thing about being coaches, being able to adjust on the fly at this moment… At the same time, I’ve already proven myself in Game 4 that I can get things done. I can go out there and get us some quality buckets, quality shots. So, I feel like he didn’t use what truly got him there.”
Glen Davis played 21 minutes in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals. In those 21 minutes, he scored six points on two-for-four shooting from the field while corralling nine rebounds. Clearly, Davis feels he should have played more.
While Davis’ criticism of Rivers is quite harsh, this is also not the first time Davis has taken a shot at Rivers as a coach.
Davis Called Rivers ‘Lucky’ and ‘Overrated’
On February 16, 2017, Davis was even more critical of Rivers during an interview with Chris Broussard. Davis believes that Rivers’ circumstances in Boston gave him a reputation that he did not deserve.
“What Doc had in ’08 was special, and he was lucky as hell… The year before that, they was wearing trash bags… But then the next year they win it, now he is one of the best coaches ever? I’m just not feeling that. You know what I mean? You give credit to (Kevin Garnett). You give credit to Paul Pierce. You give credit to Ray Allen. Those are the guys who made sure whatever Doc needed to be done got done. So now it’s easy for Doc to do his job.”
Despite the clear issues he had with Rivers during their time together in Boston, Davis went back to Rivers when Doc was both the head coach and head of Basketball Operations of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014.
His words about Rivers made things a little awkward when Rivers attended a televised mini-reunion by Kevin Garnett held on his show Area 21 that same year.
Rivers Mocked Davis to His Face
On May 8, 2017, Garnett brought in old Celtics teammates Davis, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, and Kendrick Perkins to reminisce on their times together as teammates. During the segment, Rivers made a surprise appearance. While the others were all excited to see their old coach, Davis did not initially appear happy to see him.
As they were all reminiscing, Rivers’ acknowledged Davis’ comments about him a few months prior, and decided to respond by telling an embarrassing story about his former player.
“Hey Baby been on me lately, so I’m going to get on him,” Rivers said, causing everyone, including Davis, to laugh hysterically.
“I’m going to tell you a Baby story that we found out. Baby gained weight one training camp, which is impossible to gain weight during training camp. It’s impossible, and what we found out was with Baby was coming right when the food was served, and then he was coming back an hour later, walking in, acting like, ‘What (have) we got to eat today?’ He had already eaten once.”
Davis was a good sport about it, but he may not have been too excited to see the coach he publicly criticized not much earlier.
It’s clear that all these years later, Davis definitely has some feedback for the man who coached him for the majority of his NBA career.