Doc Rivers on blowing 3-1 playoff leads: ‘I don’t get enough credit for getting the three wins’

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Doc Rivers had three teams — Orlando Magic in 2003 and Clippers in 2015 and 2020 — blow 3-1 playoff leads, but the current Milwaukee Bucks coach says the series collapses are “unfair in some ways.” (Los Angeles Times illustration, Photos by Associated Press)

Doc Rivers is one of the winningest coaches in NBA history.

The current Milwaukee Bucks coach has 1,154 career regular-season wins and can tie former Lakers and Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson for seventh on the all-time list with a victory Wednesday against the Denver Nuggets.

He also led the Boston Celtics to an NBA title in 2008 and back to the finals in 2010 during a 26-year coaching career that also included seven seasons with the Clippers and stints with the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers.

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But Rivers also might forever be known as the coach who has trouble holding onto 3-1 series leads in the playoffs.

Some fans don’t seem willing to forget that Rivers blew such advantages three times — with the Magic in 2003 (to the Detroit Pistons in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs) and with the Clippers in 2015 (to the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference semifinals) and also with the Clippers in 2020 (to the Nuggets in the conference semifinals).

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Rivers thinks the criticism he receives for those collapses is “unfair in some ways.”

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“I don’t get enough credit for getting the three wins,” Rivers recently told Andscape. “I get credit for losing. I always say, ‘What if we had lost to Houston in six?’ No one cares. One of the things that I’m proud of is we’ve never been swept. All the coaches have been swept in the playoffs. My teams achieve. A lot of them overachieve and I’m very proud of that.”

The 2002-03 Magic team was an eighth seed that pushed the top-seeded Pistons to the brink of elimination. The 2014-15 Clippers finished the regular season at 56-26 and earned the third seed in the West. After defeating the defending champion San Antonio Spurs in the first round, the Clippers went on to face the…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/doc-rivers-blowing-3-1-203016626.html

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Publish date : 2025-03-26 20:30:00

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