Doc Rivers spent time working on the speech he will deliver Saturday when he is formally inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, and what he discovered during the writing process surprised him. The speech, it turned out, had very little to do with him.
He said that when you go through the process of writing something like that, you realize it is not about you in a very good way. The people in your life got you there, he said, and the speech becomes a celebration of them rather than of yourself. He described it as a thankful journey and said the Hall of Fame should be exactly that.
Rivers ranks sixth on the all-time list of wins for NBA coaches, with 1,194 regular-season victories, trailing only Gregg Popovich, Don Nelson, Lenny Wilkens, Jerry Sloan and Pat Riley, all of whom are themselves Hall of Famers. He also won 114 playoff games, fourth-most in league history, and won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008. He played 13 seasons as a player, made one All-Star team, and has spent time as a broadcaster.
Rivers insists his retirement from coaching is real.
The career in full
He grew up in Illinois and played at Marquette before a 13-year NBA playing career. His first year as a head coach in Orlando produced a 41-41 record with a team he called the 301s, none of whom appeared in the preseason ranking of the league’s top 300 players. The success of that season gave him the confidence he carried throughout his career.
He won a championship in Boston in 2008, one of the signature accomplishments of his coaching life. Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, the stars of that team, will present him for his enshrinement Saturday.
The regrets and the milestones
Rivers has one significant regret from his coaching career. He left the Celtics for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2013 and said in reflection that he underestimated what a great situation he was in and took it for granted. He said he made a mistake. The Clippers had talented players when he arrived, but the organization was deeply troubled under the ownership of Donald Sterling, whose racist comments were exposed shortly after Rivers joined the team and led to Sterling’s ban by the NBA. Within his first week, he told an assistant they had a lot of work to do.
Critics have long pointed to 10 losses in Game 7s as an Achilles heel of his coaching record, the most of any coach in league history. His supporters counter with 114 playoff wins.
What retirement looks like
Rivers is 63 and has seven grandchildren. He has a house on the water and golfs as often as he can. He reflected on what 27 seasons as a coach cost him in family time, describing the toll it takes as something people who have not done it cannot fully understand. You are never home, you make sacrifices and your family makes them with you.
That is over now, at least the coaching part. His family has a running pool on whether he will end up back in broadcasting, which he has done before and which he acknowledges is a real possibility.
Mentorship and relationships
Rivers described some of the relationships that emerged from his coaching career as among the things he is most proud of. He spotted coaching potential in Tyronn Lue when Lue played just 11 games for him in Orlando during the 2003-04 season, told Lue to call him if he ever wanted a job, and made good on that promise when Lue did. Lue went on to become a successful head coach in his own right.
His relationship with Rajon Rondo was complicated during their time together in Boston. But Rondo is now among the former players he talks to most regularly. That is what the game does, he said.
Riley saw something in him before he was himself sure he belonged on a sideline. He said Riley kept pushing him toward coaching even when he was resisting, and he credited that persistence with setting the trajectory that led to Saturday’s induction.
