Are we sure Doc Rivers is a Good Coach?

When the news broke that Doc Rivers was out as the LA Clippers coach the NBA world reacted with shock. After seven seasons and not even a single western conference finals appearance the NBA’s most beloved hoarse-voiced coach was out of a job for all of a few days. The 76ers fresh off their own string of playoff disappointments swooped in and signed Rivers to a five-year deal. The move has been met with applause from all corners of the NBA media as being a great hire. However, the question needs to be asked, is Doc Rivers actually a good coach?

Rivers’ reputation is that he is one of the best coaches in the NBA. He’s beloved by his players and has a championship ring to back up his pedigree. However, upon closer examination, Doc Rivers’ resume doesn’t look all that sterling. He has overseen a multitude of playoff debacles and for all the talk of him being a player whisper, his teams have rarely exceeded their talent levels. Doc seems to be a great human being and helped guide the Clippers during the Donald Sterling debacle but his coaching record leaves a lot to be desired. Examining the totality of Rivers’ career one comes to the conclusion that his reputation far exceeds his exploits and his reputation as a great coach is unequivocally underserved.

Doc’s first season as a head coach explains why his reputation has always been inflated. The Magic in the summer of 1999 traded away franchise star Penny Hardaway and signed Rivers to be their head coach. The Magic had gone 33–17 in the lockout-shortened season and the departure of Penny Hardaway was thought to be the precursor to them tumbling to the bottom of the league in the 99–00 season.

Doc, with no prior head coaching experience, stepped in and guided the Magic to a 41–41 record. The Magic missed the playoffs by one game and Doc took home NBA coach of the year for his services. The view that Rivers had prevented a total collapse in his first season as a head coach won him the award, but was that actually true?

As Hardaway’s career continued it was clear the knee injury he had suffered in the 97–98 season had limited him. His reputation at the turn of a new millennium outweighed his actual talent. In truth, Hardaway had been overrated for a while. He was great early in his career but that coincided with the three-year stretch when the three-point line was made closer. The Magic losing Hardaway did not make them better by any stretch, but it wasn’t nearly as devastating a loss as advertised.

The second component is that the Magic’s roster in 99–00 was actually pretty good, it was just filled with guys that the general public overlooked. The Magic were led by the duo of Darrell Armstrong and Bo Outlaw and saw key contributions from a young Ben Wallace. Armstrong and Outlaw (that’d make an amazing law firm) were good NBA players that had been for some time. The only problem was they weren’t high volume scorers. The Magic’s top-3 players in Win Shares produced, 8, 6.8, and 5.6 over the 82 game season. The Orlando Magic in 2018–19 went 42–40 and their top-3 Win Share producers had seasons of 10, 6.9, and 5.1. The Magic in 99–00 was a team constructed to be around .500 and they did.

Doc Rivers got a lot of credit for guiding that team to a .500 record but in reality, they actually underperformed based on point-differential. The team should have gone 43–39 in a context neutral environment. A dip in two wins is not a huge deal but the point is Doc Rivers won Coach of the Year, his first season as a coach because the media fundamentally misunderstood the talent that was already in Orlando. That’s not Rivers’ fault but it completely changed the trajectory of his career. He was deemed a great coach in year one and that has stuck twenty years later. So let’s see if Doc was actually able to become the great coach he was prematurely anointed.

Rivers spent three more full seasons in Orlando, never winning fewer than 42 games but more than 44. In essence, he kept the team at roughly the same level as the team he inherited. The 2000–01 season saw the departure of Ben Wallace, ouch, but the arrival of Tracy McGrady and Mike Miller. T-Mac, at only 21 years old, would produce 8.3 Win Shares in his first season in Orlando. Miller as a rookie put up 3.3 Win Shares, a very good result from a 20-year-old rookie. Bo Outlaw and Darrell Armstrong declined with age but were still solid NBA players. However, there was another narrative windfall for Rivers.

Grant Hill came in the summer of 2000 and due to a series of injuries would only play 47 games over the next four seasons. Hill was a stud and his loss prevented expectations to grow for the Magic. Simply treading water was deemed a success. With hindsight, the arrival of T-Mac and Miller with the current roster suggested that the Magic should have grown into something better than a .500 team. Yet, they didn’t.

McGrady continued to get better and the Magic continued to be the same team as before. Slightly over .500 and a first-round playoff exit. Each season the Magic underperformed their expected record, even with one of the league’s premier isolation scorer’s in tow. Rivers’ final full season was T-Mac’s finest but due to injury and age, the rest of the roster had deteriorated enough that the Magic were really a .500, at best, squad. The Magic went 42–40, beating their expected record of 41–41, and pushed the Pistons to seven games in their first-round playoff exit. Talk about a moral victory. Rivers would depart next season after the Magic started the season 1–10. They still had T-Mac and the interim head coach went 20–51.

Doc Rivers’ time in Orlando has been celebrated as a masterclass in coaching. In all honesty, it looks like he led the Magic to expectations and not much more. That’s really good for a first-time head coach but would Rivers have been given such a long leash coaching a perpetually .500ish team with a budding superstar on the roster if it wasn’t for a fluke coach of the year award? Chances are if it wasn’t for that award and the moral victory of playing seven first-round playoff games against a 50 win number one seed (yes, the East was that horrible in 2002–03) that Rivers’ time in Orlando would have been viewed as a disappointment.

Rivers took the rest of the 2003–04 season off before he took over the Boston Celtics, where he had his most successful stint. Over nine seasons in Boston, Rivers won one championship, made the finals twice, and the Eastern Conference Finals three times. Those represent the farthest he has ever advanced with any team in the playoffs. Before we take a look at Rivers’ first season in Boston let’s take a quick look at the team he inherited.

The 2003–04 Celtics were a hot mess. They suffered through two coaches to the tune of a 36–46 record and still somehow made the playoffs. They were promptly swept by the Pacers in the first round of the playoffs and Danny Ainge promptly set out to find a coach to right the ship. What should be noted is that the 2003–04 season was Paul Pierce’s worst season of his career up until that point. In fact, it was a completely uncharacteristic drop from a player in their prime. His .109 Win Shares per 48 minutes was the lowest of his career until the 2015–16 season when he was 38 years old. As soon as Rivers got into town, Pierce got back to his usual production, but in many respects, the Celtics disappointing 03–04 season came down to Pierce not having it.

The Celtics instantly improved to a 45 win team and Pierce went from 7.1 Win Shares to 11.2, close to his previous levels of performance. That in of itself explains almost half of their nine-win improvement but Rivers was able to cultivate and improve the Celtics young players like Tony Allen, Al Jefferson, Ricky Davis, and Kendrick Perkins. The Celtics, once again, were eliminated in the first round by the Pacers but it did take seven games, so you know, a moral victory.

What looked to be a growing young team around a bonafide All-Star quickly turned sour in 2005–06. The Celtics brought in veterans, who were better than the young core the Celtics had assembled, but suddenly became a lottery team with a 33 win season. 2006–07 was even worse as Pierce missed half of the season and the Celtics won 24 games. However, Doc got to run with his young guys and Al Jefferson, Delonte West, and Rajon Rondo got to see significant court time. The promise that the Celtics young guns showed ended up being the most important development in Doc Rivers’ career. Even if those teams weren’t really any good.

In the summer of 2007, the Celtics cashed in their chips and brought in Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to play alongside Paul Pierce. The most important decision they made, however, was holding onto Rajon Rondo, who would be a crucial component to the best Celtics teams since the days of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. This is where Rivers’ legacy was made. The next five seasons were when Rivers made his only conference finals, NBA finals, and won his lone championship.

The Celtics were a defensive juggernaut over this period. Their worst season saw them finish 5th in defensive rating. The Celtics’ offense was a different story. Starting in 2007–08 their offensive rating went from 10th to 6th to 15th to 18th in 2010–11. The Celtics were awesome over this period of time and won a combined 234 games and another 43 playoff games. The reality is that the Celtics were a bonafide superteam over this period. The combination of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and, by the end, Rajon Rondo gave the Celtics four All-Star caliber players. The question remains, how much credit does Rivers deserve for the Celtics’ success over this time?

The fair answer to this question is that Rivers certainly did not screw this situation up. The Celtics decline had more to do with the age of their big-3 than anything else. In year one Allen was 32, Garnett 31, and Pierce 30. By the end, they were all out of their prime. The only thing that kept it going was Rajon Rondo’s growth into an All-NBA quality player offsetting the age-related decline that Allen, Garnett, and Pierce experienced. With the depth of these Celtics teams, Rivers could have done a better job managing minutes as injuries ended up costing these teams chances at championships. Rivers thus far has not really elevated his teams, he has simply guided them to where their talent should have taken them. That’s not easy, but it hardly makes someone a great coach.

The 2011–12 season saw the lockout and the Celtics make their final stand. The Celtics defense was once again the best in the league, although their offense dipped to 27th in net rating. After a torrid slog to finish the regular season the Celtics scraped their way to the Eastern Conference in an epic showdown between LeBron James and the Miami Heat where they lost in seven games, again another moral victory. The Celtics disintegrated into a 41 win team the next season and Rivers looked for a way out. He wouldn’t have to wait long to coach another contender.

In the summer of 2013, the Clippers traded an unprotected first-round pick to the Boston Celtics to secure Doc Rivers’ services as not only their Head Coach but also as their senior vice president of basketball operations. The trade tells you everything you need to know about Rivers’ reputation. Coaches aren’t traded for unprotected picks. The Clippers doing so meant they believed that having Rivers was essentially as valuable as acquiring a starting-caliber player.

The Clippers had brought Rivers in to get them over the hump. After the acquisition of Chris Paul in 2011 the Clippers had been an excellent regular season team but had failed to live up to expectations in the playoffs. Rivers’ one goal was to get the best out of the Clippers in the playoffs. It was something he failed at miserably over his seven seasons in LA.

The Clippers team that Doc Rivers inherited was built to win. They had prime Chris Paul, one of the greatest players of his generation, Blake Griffin at the peak of powers before injuries limited him, and a defensive anchor in DeAndre Jordan that before the concept of a stretch-five took the league by storm was literally a commodity worth locking in a house for. With this core, the Clippers won at least 50 games each of the next four seasons and won a grand total of two playoff series. The Clippers never made it to the Conference Finals and the team was slowly sold for pieces as Rivers was put in charge of a rebuild.

The biggest stain on Rivers’ legacy should have been this four-year stretch but somehow he topped himself this past postseason. The 2019–20 Clippers were one of the three best teams in the league. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George formed the best wing combination in the NBA and were surrounded by fantastic role players. This was the best roster, top to bottom, in the entire league. They fended off the upstart Mavericks, who were one of the best seven seed in NBA history, and then faced a Nuggets team fresh off of a taxing seven-game series. The Clippers stormed out to a 3–1 series lead and then they became a meme.

The Clippers lost three straight games and collapsed in a way that seemed unimaginable. Rivers watched in horror as the Nuggets simply ravaged the Clippers’ defense. The collapse seemed unimaginable for a Doc Rivers led team, except it wasn’t. Rivers’ led teams have blown a 3–1 series advantage three times in his career. There have only been 13 instances of a team coming back from 3–1 in NBA history. Rivers has been on the losing end of 23% of them.

The narrative that Doc Rivers is a great coach doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Players may love him but being a great coach isn’t about how many glowing eulogies you’ll have but how many fingers are absent a ring. He hasn’t consistently shown the ability to truly elevate his rosters and has failed to adapt when necessary in the playoffs. Rivers’ first season coaching he won Coach of the Year and the in the 20 years since people have been making excuses for him when he has failed.

Rivers is not a great coach but that doesn’t mean he should be out of a job. He’s a fine coach that can guide a talent-laden roster to right about where they should. I’m sure Sixers fans are dreaming of championships with Rivers coming to town but unless the roster improves that won’t happen. Rivers is an average coach who has spent the last 16 seasons with well above average talent. His career is far from over and perhaps Rivers can finally live up to his reputation in Philadelphia but I wouldn’t count on it.

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