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I am an unabashed Doc Rivers fan.
It’s hard not to be. He is, by all accounts, a coach in the truest sense of the word. He rallied the 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics around the idea of “ubuntu,” a word of Southern African origin, which translates to, “I am what I am because of what we are.”
If you can’t get behind that, then, well, that says more about you than it does Rivers.
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Those Celtics — led by Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen; coalesced by Rivers — were one of the NBA’s all-time great teams, winners of 66 games, owners of that season’s top defense (98.1 points allowed per 100 possessions) and its best net rating (+10.8).
Those Celtics probably would have repeated in 2009 had Kevin Garnett not injured his knee, and they nearly won again in 2010 had Kendrick Perkins not injured his knee before Game 7 of their second NBA Finals in three years against the rival Los Angeles Lakers.
There is another famous coaching story behind that, too. Following a February 2010 win over the Lakers, Rivers demanded $100 each from players and staff and stuffed $2,600 over a ceiling tile inside what was then Staples Center, promising to return the money if they returned for the Finals. And, against most odds, they did, as a No. 4 seed — reaching Game 7 against Kobe Bryant’s charges, even — before, once again, succumbing to injury.
Rivers always said those Celtics — Garnett, Pierce, Allen, Perkins and Rajon Rondo — never lost as a healthy starting five. He was right, of course, but he said it so often that it became a running joke. Which he had a lot of, too. Mostly about players and their fitness in training camp. Everyone arrived in the best shape of his life at the start of every year.
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“He’s 15 pounds lighter,” he’d say with a smile, no matter the player.
He could be serious, too, especially on worldly matters. I’ll let you decide whether you think he was right, but he stands for what he thinks is, and his players respect him for it. That is why Garnett, Pierce and Allen will present him into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend in Springfield,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/naismith-memorial-basketball-hall-of-fames-class-of-2026-doc-rivers-always-embodied-the-fighting-spirit-of-a-hall-of-famer-214647705.html
Author : Ben Rohrbach
Publish date : 2026-08-14 21:46:00
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